Post Luck

The charred bones of the dirigible Hindenburg had not had five days to cool last week before the Saturday Evening Post was out on the nation's newsstands with an amazingly apposite article. Title: "Five O'Clock, Off California--"Author: Lieutenant George W. Campbell, U. S. N. Subject: the breaking-up and loss of the Navy dirigible Macon off Point Sur in 1935. Writing with the care and control of Stephen Crane's classic chronicle of disaster, The Open Boat, Lieut. Campbell tells a memorable tale. Without a wasted word, readers are made vividly aware of every disciplined detail of the Macon's last flight, from the rising siren to the final, gentle crash on the surface of the sea and the pyre of gasoline flames.

Inasmuch as the Post is printed three weeks ahead of publication, "Five O'Clock, Off California--" was not only a cracking Post piece but one more example of the uncanny Post prescience which has seemingly operated in an astonishing number of cases to link its articles with red-hot, unpredictable news. It was natural enough that the Post, like Collier's, should run a dirigible article at about the time of the Hindenburg's first voyage of the spring season.* But only by luck did the Post article deal with disaster.

Most famed example of what used to be called Lorimer Luck/- occurred at the death of Warren Gamaliel Harding in San Francisco in 1923. Mrs. Harding had just read to the ailing President an article about himself by the Post's Samuel G. Blythe when he turned quietly over and died. In 1931, brilliant Lillian Leitzel of the circus was killed by a fall from a trapeze. Next week the Post carried an article about their professional risks by her husband, Alfredo Codona. Title: "Taking the Fall." In 1932, an issue of the S. E. P. hit the stands a week ahead of the Ivar Kreuger financial scandals with a long write-up of the Swedish 'match magnate by oldtime Postman Isaac Marcosson. In 1927, when the submarine S-4 was lost, the Post came on the stands the same week with an article by Commander Edward Ellsberg about the salvage of its sister ship, the S-51.

In 1934, same week the Morro Castle burned off the Jersey shore, the S. E. P. was featuring a newspaper short story by Manuel Komroff, based on the Titanic disaster, called "Never Misspell a Name." In 1935, Test Pilot James ("Jimmy") Collins plunged to his death a few weeks after the Post ran his article "Return to Earth," a graphic piece of writing describing the plane-tester's feelings as he shot toward the ground at 400 m.p.h. Same year came the Post's most melodramatic news-coincidence, the article "Prelude to a Heterocrat--the Evolution of Huey Long." which appeared in S. E. P. day before the Louisiana Senator was assassinated.

*Collicr's was out one week ahead of the Hin-daiburg's arrival with an article describing the speed & comfort of the ship.

/- George Horace Lorimer retired from S.E.P.'s editorship in 1936. Present editor: Wesley Winans Stout.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.