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Show 1 1 R ' 'ffnl fly Concerto fur Two-Finger Typewriter: The most eagerly awaited mail in more than 200 Army and Navy buses from Australia to North Africa is the semi-monthly copy of The Grimy Gazette ... the editor is a Chicago girl named Maggie O'Fla-hcrty O'Fla-hcrty . . . Her brother, in the army, sometime ago sent her this plea: "What we need here more than anything any-thing are new jokes. We're telling the same ones to each other 20 times! Fergoodnessakes, sis, dig up some for us!" So Maggie started collecting them slightly risgay or pure puns. When they were too naughty she laundered them as best she could and left it to the boys to decode them into unexpurgated literature. Her gag-scouts are friends who travel in parlor cars, and her girl friends bring those they hear in beauty parlors and cafes . . . Twice a month Maggie puts them in the mails for all over the fighting fronts . . . One compliment came from Capt. Tom Griffin in N. Africa. He said: "Thanks for the Gazettes. Laughs are few and far between out here" ... A Camp Polk, La., Sgt. wrote that her Gazettes solved the problem of getting the men to rea the bulletin boards. Oh, yes. Maggie O'Flaherty has a regular occupation. She writes radio shows for kiddies. I She is one of the lovelier actresses . . . Her young actor-groom enlisted on that December 7th and he's been on active duty abroad for over a year . . . Last night she was at a girl friend's apartment playing gin-rummy gin-rummy with a foursome of gals . . . When she left the room to answer the phone, one of the girls observed: "Hasn't she the loveliest figure? Amazing how she's kept it so trim since he left." "And why not?" said Tallulah. "Nobody's been able to make an appointment ap-pointment with her for over a year except Elizabeth Arden!" Billy Bryant, the famed Showboat man, was in a Broadway producer's office where a group were panning a dramatic critic, whose review that i morning lambasted their new play . . . The producer sent the critic a telegram which said: "You are selling your comedy at 2c per copy!" ... To which the reviewer replied: "And you are selling your 2c production pro-duction at $4.40! ! !" That recalls the time George Ber- nard Shaw tried to sell a dated manuscript to a weekly magazine, which rejected it with this note: "Our editors see no reason why it should be published by us." Shaw answered: "Am forwarding a copy in Braille." Earle Stanley Gardner, the mystery mys-tery master, was discussing the cooking in New Orleans. He bemoaned be-moaned the fact that the cuisine there was so good and the variety of rich dishes so tempting, that on his last visit he nearly ate himself to death . . . "Then you don't like New Orleans?" asked his listener . . . "Like it!" he ejaculated. "I love it. It's Gout's own country!" The editors of the Mirror consider this one of their favorite war gags: A Berlin worker asked a bank clerk how to invest his life savings of 1,000 marks . . . "Buy State bonds," he was advised . .' . "But," he butted, but-ted, "supposing the State goes broke?" . . "You forget the Nazi Party will see that it doesn't!" . . . "But," persisted the man, "supposing "suppos-ing the Nazi Party collapses?" . . . "Well," was the answer, "isn't that worth 1,000 marks?" A'ofes of an Innocent Bystander: The Intelligentsia: The March of Time editors edited out the last two stanzas of the ditty, "Stalin Wasn't Stallin' " (rendered by the Golden Gate Quartet), which have to do with the American Eagle and British Bulldog helping the Russian Bear . . . Tom O'Connor's deft piece in PM, which castigated E. James Smythe, the Bund and Klan supporter, support-er, was the week's tops in lowdown reporting . . . Roger Butterfield of Life says the piece on Al Schmid, the marine hero, couldn't have been done sans the help of the Philadelphia Philadel-phia reporters who dug It up originally origi-nally . . . Time has its own intelligence intelli-gence bureau off-the-record statements state-ments and background on stories and people, which are distributed for the personal observation of Time editors only . . . Quentin Reynolds probably is in Russia, having flown there longer than a fortnight ago ... 93 newspapers suspended publication pub-lication in 1942. Those who plan giving- parties in their homes for servicemen might follow the policy of the Stage Door Canteen in New York. The Canteen workers have learned the songs the servicemen do not want to hear. They include: "Miss You." "Dear Mom." "We Did It Before." "Remember Pearl Harbor." Har-bor." "White Cliffs of Dover," "Letter "Let-ter From Home." "God Bless America," Amer-ica," "This Is Worth Fighting For" and "My Buddy." All of them, it is explained, "are depressives." |