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Show i f -' i,' j By JACK LAIT (Piach Hitting this week lot Walter Winchell) Memo from Manhattan With my eon, paratrooper - war correspondent George I.nlt, I saw a private projection of "The Story of OI Joe," which then had not yet opened In New York. This Is a film centered around some of the famous activities of Ernie Pyle. We both have a sentimental interest in Ernie. I knew him when he was an Inconspicuous Incon-spicuous desk drudge on a Washington Washing-ton newspaper, a nice little guy who gave no Indication of the immortality immortal-ity he wna to attain In our profes-nlon. profes-nlon. But George knew him more Intimately than he knows his brother. broth-er. They crossed together In a tiny tub to Lisbon, flew from there to London, shared a little flat during the murderous blitz. They went together to-gether to Africa and shared tents, Jeeps and foxholes during the adversities ad-versities of the British defeat and retreat and through the triumphs of the allies from El Alnmeln to conquest con-quest of the desert and the Mediterranean. Medi-terranean. They were side by aide In 8lclly and In Italy. George had caught malaria In the desert and came back here for a spell of rest. After that he went through campaigns In New Guinea, 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 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 been through plenty with him, told him he was bound for stuff 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 cults of long, heavy flannel underwear un-derwear during the earlier campaigns. 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!" "Tho 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 nto Flo ftitl 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 any 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 Job well. . . . Devoting all my space this week to Ernie Pyle makes the first time I have done that since, 30 years ago this week, I wrote an obituary tribute oa Paul Armstrong, who was the exact antithesis of the man I deal with here. . . . That bears out a theory which has long seemed sound to me a man is judged in the direct ratio of whiit lie accomplishes to what he attempts. |