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Show ll'II ft t .rvLlA By JACK LAIT (Pinch Hitting this week for Walter Winchell) Memo from Manhattan With my son, paratrooper -war, correspondent George Lalt, I saw a private projection of "The Story of GI Joe," which then had not yet opened in New York. This Is a film centered around some of the famousi activities of Ernie Pyle. We both have a sentimental Interest In Ernie.! I knew him when he was an incon-' splcuous desk drudge on a Washing-! ton newspaper, a nice little guy who) gave no indication of the Immortality Immortal-ity he was to attain in our profession. profes-sion. But George knew him more Intimately than he knows his brother. broth-er. They crossed together in a tlnyi tub to Lisbon, flew from there to London, shared a little flat during; the murderous blitz. They went to-i gether to Africa and shared tents, jeeps and foxholes during the ad-, versifies of the British defeat and retreat and through the triumphs of: the allies, from El Alameln to con-1 quest of the desert and the Medl-1 terranean. They were tide by side In Sicily and In Italy. George had caught malaria In the desert and came back hero for a spell of rest. After that he went through campaigns In New Guinea, Sal-' Sal-' pan, through the bitter fighting on Leyte. He made battle Jumps with the Eleventh Airborne Division Di-vision and was about to go on to Luzon when the malaria caught up with him again. Gen. MacArthur ordered him flown back on sick leave. Meanwhile, Ernie Pyle had come home to j rest and recuperate at his house in Albuquerque, N. M. I met George at my Beverly Hills, retreat, the day after he landed in San Francisco, and while we were there Ernie visited us. He was now on his way to cover the fighting in the Pacific. By this time, he was the most widely syndicated reporter In the world, the only man in my, knowledge who ever had both the, top best-sellers on the book market at once, and he could have commanded com-manded princely prices to lecture, write for magazines or take any of a score of broadcasting offers. . . . George, who had beetf through plenty with him, told him he was bound for stff much worse and more dangerous dan-gerous than he had ever known. George pointed out to him his situation, situa-tion, on top of the world, and literally liter-ally begged him not to go. But Ernie said the very fact that he had built up so large a following was a mandate and an obligation; he couldn't quit in the middle; he had a hunch he would never' come back, but he insisted he should go on. Ernie was a light, slight chap who was always cold wore two suits of long, heavy flannel un-derwear un-derwear during the earlier cam. paigns. ... As we shook hands with him and he started off on the Journey from which he was never to return, he chuckled and said to George: "Anyway, fellow, down there, I won't freeze to death!" "The Story of GI Joe" takes him only as far as his turning to the road to Rome. . . . Burgess Meredith, who gives an uncanny personification, personifica-tion, studied under George and others who knew Ernie well and acquired his little intimate mannerisms; manner-isms; makes even those who knew Pyle think he looks like him. . . . But, though he is a star and playing a greater one, GI Joe is the hero collectively of this brave film. I call it brave because Lester Cowan put two and a half million dollars Into It, though he had pledged Ernie not to glorify him, gave his principal character no suggestion of any sort of romance, and contracted to let Ernie throw out any scenes he didn't like. He did discard several, which were quite costly, because they made too much of him and too little of the men he loved and who loved him. '. . . Perhaps It was this spirit and faculty that lifted Ernie Pyle above iany other reporter of his generation. 'He was a self-effacing little fellow, 'not physically brave, who sweated and shuddered during action, but who not only never ducked it, but went, weary and woebegone, to seek . It . . . George tells me that during the nightly Nazi raids on London, Pyle would be panic-stricken yet he was the first one at his typewriter type-writer when It stopped. ... He had a lot of resistance, as many wiry little men have. . . . With the kind of stuff he wrote, he could have almost as well worked miles back of the front. But the reporter In him drove him right to where things ' were thickest. After many long years at every angle of the business, I am scarcely '.a starry-eyed worshiper of a man simply because he does a newspaper I job well. . . . Devoting all my space I this week to Ernie Pyle makes the first time I have done that since. , :!0 years ago this week, I wrote au ' obituary tribute on Paul Armstrong, i who was the exact antithesis of the ! man I deal with here. . . . That bears ' out a theory which has long seemed 'l sound to nie a man Is Judged In tht direct ratio of what he accomplishes ; to what he attempts. |
