Damage Suits

Three notable damage suits stirred the newspaper world last week.

Zbyszko v. Hearst. Stanislaus Zbyszko, ponderous wrestler, filed a $250,000 suit against Publisher William Randolph Hearst's New York American. Reason: The American had printed a gorilla's picture side-by-side with that of Wrestler Zbyszko; had commented: "Stanislaus Zbyszko ... is not fundamentally different from the gorilla in physique." Wrestler Zbyszko complained that since the event he had been "shunned and avoided by his wife, relatives, neighbors, associates and other persons."

Reo v. Automotive Daily News. On May 15, Automotive Daily News, automobile trade paper, published a story concerning an alleged new Reo eight. Reo Motor Car Co. promptly filed suit for one million dollars libel, calling the story "utterly false and without foundation." Reo's President Richard H. Scott took a page advertisement in metropolitan dailies to denounce the "pastime of originating and circulating falsehoods about motor industry," and improved the opportunity to cheer for the Reo six and to flay eights in general. He has seen no eight as good as the Reo Six.

McLean v. The Record. Rich and social is Edward Beale McLean, publisher of the Washington Post, famed as owner of the Hope diamond, and as a friend of the late President Warren Gamaliel Harding (TIME, March 10, 1924). Last week he sued the Philadelphia Record, a Democratic daily, for one million dollars damages on account of libel which Plaintiff McLean described in his declaration as "false, wicked, malicious, scandalous and defamatory." This he did because, said he, the Philadelphia Record did wickedly contrive and falsely and maliciously intend to bring him (McLean) into public disrepute and "to cause it to be suspected and believed that he attended a dinner at the Belgian Embassy in a disgraceful and drunken condition and that at such a dinner he had annoyed and shocked guests of the Belgian Ambassador and that the Belgian Ambassador was perplexed and ordered the plaintiff to leave in order to save his other guests from further embarrassment." In his declaration Plaintiff McLean said that "the plaintiff did not attend a dinner at the Belgian Embassy referred to in the article hereinafter complained of and did not at such a dinner dine 'too well' and did not annoy any guests at such dinner nor shock said guests and did not subject the Belgian Ambassador to embarrassment by reason of his conduct and was not requested to leave such dinner."*

What, then, caused Publisher McLean's Washington Post's editorial discourtesy to the Belgian Ambassador, Prince Albert Edouard Eugene Lamoral de Ligne? What moved Friend of Belgium Herbert Hoover to ask the Prince de Ligne to a small dinner as a special mark of esteem? Publisher McLean said he did not. And that being so, President Hoover's courtesy to the Prince was not, said Plaintiff McLean, a "squelching" of Publisher McLean--as the Philadelphia Record had said it was.

Thus Washingtonians, last week, were completely at a loss for an explanation which would reconcile the Post's discourtesy to the Prince, and Publisher McLean's denial of connection therewith. Many a Washingtonian did indeed continue to believe that Prince and Publisher had had a tiff, and that the tiff had been preceded by meat and drink, and that it had resulted in Prince and Publisher each feeling insulted by the other.

"Not For Sale"

Developments last week in the Federal Trade Commission's investigation of wholesale newspaper buying by International Paper & Power Co. were:

1) Hard-working Richard ("Young Dick") Grozier, publisher of Boston's Post, (circulation, 397,419), son of Edwin Atkins Grozier, the Post's late great Publisher, testified. He submitted a letter he had received from his managing editor, Clifton B. Carberry, ablest lobe of the Post's brain. In part the letter read:

"Dear Dick: Charlie O'Malley was in last night. . . . He said he was authorized to offer $20,000,000 in cash for the Post.

He said he could put through the deal in a month if you were willing to sell. I think what he says was nine-tenths bluff.

. . . For some years he has been a sort of press agent for the gas and electric people. . . . According to Charlie they [the Insull group] expect to round up fifty or sixty of the biggest papers. . . ." Mr. Grozier said he thought Mr. O'Malley had been "talking through his hat," and anyway his Post was not for sale.

As suddenly as Samuel Insull's power interests came into the investigation, they went out, when Charles O'Malley, Boston advertising agent referred to in Carberry's letter, testified he had not mentioned Insull to Carberry; had mentioned, instead, two Manhattan brokers, one Campion, one Colloran, who wanted to buy the Post for "other interests."

2) Samuel Emory Thomason, half of Bryan-Thomason Newspaper Publishers, Inc. (TIME, May 20), also testified. He admitted that he had been commissioned by International officials to try to buy many midwest newspapers. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, said Co-Publisher Thomason, was approached by him. It refused an offer of 21 million dollars. The Plain Dealer was not for sale, Mr. Thomason was told. With many another journal he had the same success. But in three newspapers (Chicago Journal, Tampa Tribune, Greensboro, N. C. Record) owned by Bryan-Thomason, International has an interest--$1,630,000.

3) Frank D. Comerford, a vice president of I. P. & P., told the Commission: "I thought it unwise for our company to invest in newspapers. ... I told Graustein [Archibald Robertson Graustein, I. P. & P. president] so in private . . . but never said so in a Board of Directors meeting." In Manhattan and Richmond, Va., two more side-lights developed last week to heighten the power-paper investigation spectacle.

In Manhattan. A five million dollar mortgage was to have been taken by International Paper Co. on the new skyscraping Daily News building on East 42nd Street (opposite TIME offices). But the paper company did not advance the five millions. So said a suit against International filed in Manhattan last week by Chicago Tribune Co.'s News Syndicate Co., publisher of New York's Tabloid Daily News and Sunday News. The suit asked for $780,708. That sum, it stated, was overcharged the News by International for newsprint. Unfairly, continued the complaint, had International discriminated against the News in favor of other newspaper companies. The suit said that the $5,000,000 mortgage was a settlement arising from the overcharging.

In Richmond, John Stewart Bryan, half of Bryan-Thomason Newspaper Publishers, Inc., publisher of Richmond's News-Leader and Chicago's Journal filed suit against the rival Richmond Times-Dispatch. No declaration of particulars was filed with the suit, merely a request for $500,000 damages. Richmond newsgatherers guessed that the suit was an outcome of comment in the Times-Dispatch on the power-paper investigation, in which Publishers Bryan and Thomason were involved.

Aphorister

Rare is a great aphoristic writer and quoter of aphorisms. Such a rarity is Arthur Brisbane, Hearst Editor-Colyumist. Last week Singer Lilli Lehmann's death (see p. 78) inspired him to write: "We can get along without music, not without killing." He did not, this time, quote "Let me write a nation's song and I care not who writes its laws." Aphorists are rarely consistent.

Wholesome v. Whole

When Bobbs, Merrill Co. published Julia Peterkin's Scarlet Sister Mary, they described it as "the story of the harlot of Blue Brook Plantation." That, agreed critics who read the book, was a good and fitting description. But, when Authoress Peterkin's novel won the Pulitzer Prize (TIME, May 20), many a critic, many a journalist puckered. They felt Scarlet Sister Mary was a fine book; but they also remembered that Joseph Pulitzer, in his will providing for the yearly awards, had said:

". . . for the original American novel . . . which shall best present the wholesome atmosphere of American life and the highest standard of American manners and manhood. . . ."

Surely, said critics, Scarlet Sister Mary was not a "wholesome"' character; surely her "standards," and those of her friends, were not the "highest." Hastily newsgatherers took themselves to the Committee which had made the award. They wanted to know what had happened. John Langdon Heaton, member of that committee, was quick to explain: Because times have changed, ideas of what is what in art and literature have changed also. Therefore, said Member Heaton, the committee was hampered in its selection, in late years, and often found it necessary to pass a good novel by, just because it did not live up to the terms Publisher Pulitzer had made. And so, last year, with the aid of a blue pencil, "wholesome"' was changed to read "whole''; and "the highest standards of American manners and manhood" was crossed out entirely.

That explanation satisfied the critics.

As for cynics, they recalled that the late great blind Joseph Pulitzer was called, in the '90s, "Father of Yellow Journalism.'"* More light on the award for 1928 was shed last week by Dr. Richard Eugene Burton, Chairman of the Award Committee.

He had intimated in Minneapolis in April, before the awards were announced, that his Committee had voted the novel prize to John Rathbone Oliver's Victim and Victor. The advisory board, whose decision is final, had gone over this vote in selecting Scarlet Sister Mary. No criticism came from Dr. Burton of the decision. But.

said he: "I think it will be best if I do not serve on any of the juries in the future, since my business is lecturing on modern books, and naturally I have preferences which I must leave myself free to express." It was the second such reversal. For the 1921 novel prize, the board chose Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence after the Committee had recommended Sinclair Lewis' Main Street.

Another reversal this year was the cartoon prize. The selecting committee chose "Women Taken in Bootlegging" by Daniel Robert Fitzpatrick of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The board decided on "Tammany" by Rollin Kirby of the New York World.

Bath in the Bushes

A famed dancer's good husband, a flaming tabloid's good newsgatherer, can both be combined in one person. But that person cannot be a good gardener too. At least so learned David Vivian Bath last week. So learned also New York's Daily Mirror. This is how they found out:

Along a Maine island's rocky, windswept shore briskly stepped a young man, dark-eyed, keenly alert. When he arrived at a white, two-story, shingled house, surrounded by towering trees, thick shrubs, he turned in at its gate. North Haven townsfolk had told him this was the summer home of Ambassador Dwight Whitney Morrow; that the blue-shirted rustic hoeing in the garden was Caretaker Hubert O. Grant. Quietly the young man approached the caretaker, spoke: "Good morning, sir. I'm sick. The doctor has told me to stay outdoors. Can you give me a job?" As down-Easters will, Caretaker Grant answered in few words, nodded, handed the young man a shovel. "Dig there," he said. The young man dug. He planted sod. He transplanted bushes. For three days he worked diligently.

Then something happened. A rose bush was discovered where tulips should have been. Caretaker Grant lost his temper, the young man lost his job. And next night travelers Manhattan-bound on the State of Maine Express watched a young man, dark-eyed, keenly alert, chew a pencil, write many a word on many a piece of yellow paper. Soon in the Daily Mirror appeared a romantic piece about a "honeymoon nest." It purported to tell of the place where Anne Spencer Morrow, spinster, and Col. Charles Augustus Lindbergh, bachelor, will spend their first wedded days. And such a piece David Vivian Bath, the ousted onetime gardener, was well qualified to write, for only year before yesterday he married the entirely honeymoonish Mary Hay, dancer, onetime Mrs. Richard Barthelmess.

Were planting sods and shrubs as easy as replacing divots, Newsgatherer Bath might have been on hand last week-end to see a big amphibian plane sweep down Penobscot Bay, scutter into the Morrow cove and give forth some of the most Hearstworthy people of the hour -- Mrs. Morrow and her secretary, her daughters Anne, Elizabeth & Constance, and Pilot Lindbergh.

But Newsgatherer Bath would not have seen the new arrivals attend church services Sunday morning, for, though servants, town characters, village gossips crowded the little North Haven Chapel to overflowing, neither a Morrow nor Pilot Lindbergh worshipped in public that day.

Newsgatherers who lurked in the steady rain about the guard-encircled grounds of the white-shingled house were not much more fortunate. They caught but fleeting glimpses of Anne Morrow and her pilot as they jounced hastily by in a yellow beach wagon, pleasure bound.

*In view of this declaration, the story which TIME, May 13 reported as being current in diplomatic circles was evidently erroneous. TIME regrets any injustice thereby done to Publisher McLean.--ED.

* Because he used yellow paper for some of his editions of the New York World, and because his paper, avoiding contemporary stodginess, sought for "human interest."