Chemise Sheet

Short but raucous has been the life of the tabloid Manhattan pornoGraphic. Unlucky lately has been its Publisher Bernarr ("Body Love") Macfadden. Last June, Colyumist Walter Winchell left him for the New York Mirror, a rival tabloid; last July, Editor Emile Henry Gauvreau did the same (TIME, June 17, July 29). Last week, Editor Louis Weitzenkorn deepened the rut by following their examples. But not to the Mirror did Editor Weitzenkorn wend his editorial steps. Said he: to Paris will I go with my wife and dog, devote my time to creative writing.

Editor Weitzenkorn was full of hope when he took the editorship of the Graphic last August. Said he then: "The Graphic unquestionably got off to a bad start. Its tone has been a low voice. Its policy was a 'chemise' policy. So far as Mr. Macfadden is concerned he agrees with me that the Graphic must and will be made into a high class newspaper. . . . The tone . . . will unquestionably have to be raised. I have found the people of New York City have a lot more intelligence than they are given credit for. . . . What I want to do is to cross Park Avenue with Third Avenue. I don't want to give up Third Avenue, but I want to get Park. I believe the people on both streets have much in common and one thing is a taste for decency. The canons of journalism I learned from Herbert Bayard Swope are the only ones I know. . . ."

Nothing to say had Editor Weitzenkorn last week as post mortem over his dead editorial hopes. The tone of Publisher Macfadden's sheetlet had not been perceptibly raised. The Graphic was still the pornoGraphic.

No raw neophyte panting to remake the newspaper world was Editor Weitzenkorn. At 16, as a cub reporter on the Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Times-Leader, he had begun a long journalistic stint. He had worked on the New York Times, the Tribune, the Call, the World. When he was Sunday editor of the World, Editor Weitzenkorn saw some funny Yiddish dialect by one of his cartoonists. Colleagues said nobody outside The Bronx would understand it but Editor Weitzenkorn printed and let millions laugh at Milt Gross's "Nize Baby."