Court Adjourned

Last September Manhattan's big, busy J. Walter Thompson advertising agency launched its star account, Standard Brands, on a new radio venture. The Chase & Sanborn (coffee) division of Standard Brands had scored heavily on the air with Major Bowes and his amateurs. Then Walter P. Chrysler bought the Major away, at a time when many admen thought his peak of popularity was passed (TIME, June 22). It was up to the Thompson agency to top radio's top show in a year when novelty and unusual program ideas were being demanded in no uncertain terms by broadcast sponsors. The agency's answer was a program called "The Good Will Court of Human Relations."

Originally conceived in a small independent station as an advice hour in which Novelist Fannie Hurst was to counsel unfortunates, the Good Will Court had become a forum in which selected wretches told their troubles to real judges from the lower courts, who then dealt out free advice. A classic case was that of a young married woman who had met a "boyfriend" and made a "mistake." The resulting baby was disclaimed both by the woman's husband and by her acquaintance. Another woman convulsed Good Will Court listeners by wanting to cancel her husband's interest in a joint cemetery plot because he was serving a life term in prison.

This program, slightly toned down, Chase & Sanborn brought to its listeners over a coast-to-coast network, with commercial plugs by breathless Graham McNamee. An obvious "natural" for the mass audience, the Good Will Court was given approval by a parade of politicians led by New York's Governor Lehman and New Jersey's Governor Hoffman. The lower court judges and retired magistrates who served received $250 each, "for charity." An endless stream of stammering unfortunates appeared to feed its microphones. Not too sure they liked the idea, but reluctant to cross a good client, National Broadcasting Co.'s officials convinced themselves the program was "a good thing," had it broadcast from a private studio where no visitors were allowed.

First great denunciation of the Good Will Court came from New York's most literate Radio editor, spectacled Aaron Stein of the Post. Said he: "This hour ... is not entertainment and it is not art. When a woman comes to the microphone and tells the story of her son, who, although she is convinced of his innocence, is accused of counterfeiting, her address to the microphone is not a performance. When she breaks down, her agonized cries are not subject to criticism. No question of technique is involved to determine whether they filter through the microphone with a tone of heart-breaking sincerity. . . .

"We are not at all convinced that the Good Will Court should be a radio program. That it serves a useful purpose in providing needed advice for persons whose circumstances do not give them easy access to lawyers is undeniable. Furthermore the sponsors and producers of the program cannot be held responsible for a system that makes law and justice a difficult and terrifying matter to persons who are poor and depressed.

"The program, nevertheless, is barbarous. To subject intense human suffering to such pitiless glare of publicity is indecent. ... It attracts its audience by appeal to just those morbid impulses which turn notorious murder trials into courtroom circuses. . . ."

In complete agreement with Critic Stein, but for different reasons, were the members of the New York County Lawyers' Association, who thought the program implied that poor people could get no relief at law because of the high cost of litigation. The Chicago Bar Association's Public Relations Committee Chairman Mitchell Dawson raid he thought that the program exploited "human misery for commercial purposes . . . encroaches on the practice of law . . . undermines confidence in the courts whose judges lend themselves to the scheme."

The New York lawyers finally asked the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court for an opinion on the question of whether or not it was ethical for a judge to give legal advice "in connection with a publicity medium." For Chase & Sanborn other lawyers argued that the broadcast was "humane'' and a "great system of public education." Nevertheless, the justices of the Appellate Division frowned heavily on the Good Will Court last week. They ordered all New York State lawyers henceforth to stay out of Chase & Sanborn's court.

Chase & Sanborn dropped the program like a piping hot potato. In its place they hastily substituted "Do You Want to Be An Actor?", another mass appeal program, in which amateurs read skits.

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