OCR Text |
Show Campaign's Home Stretch. BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. Here the campaign is practically on its last legs, when it isn't standing on its head and spinning around but yet not a peep out of the three fairest-haired young hopes of the New Deal. They're still putting on an act what's known in vaudeville as a dumb act entitled "The Bollo Boys in a Sub-Cellar." Horrid tales abound. 'Tis rumored that the euraling sound coming from the White House dungeon is j caused by Tugwell trying to get the gag out of his mouth with both hands tied behind his back. And a note believed to have been written by Harry Hopkins . has been slipped j through the bars ' to smuggle in a file Irvin S. Cobb in a loaf of bread. Richberg, once the merriest of the administration's songsters, doesn't chirp any more, having been induced in-duced to take on the role of the man in the iron mask. . Remote-Control Patriotism. DID you ever notice that these impassioned European statesmen, states-men, who so boldly defy tyrants in the homeland, generally put two or three national boundaries between themselves and the objects of their hate bore cutting loose? One fiery anti-fascist waited until he got to Hoboken to tell Mussolini right to his face the face being only 5,000 miles distant exactly what he thought of him. Not that I'd blame any patriot for playing safety first, dictators being so sensitive to criticism. In fact, I like the idea so much, I'm thinking think-ing of taking a correspondence course in lion-taming, myself. Debunking Politics. CAN nothing be done to stop the destructive utterances of this man, Al Smith? Think of him, as he did in that Philadelphia speech of his, urging the voters to sift the bunk out of the campaign and study the facts. Does he want to deflate the whole system of American politics? poli-tics? Would you hire a cook who squeezed all the meat out of the sausage and fried the sausage skin for breakfast? Even so, maybe a little debunking debunk-ing would be gratifying to quite a lot of us who wish to start concentrating concen-trating on football as soon as possible. possi-ble. I'm especially interested in how Yale comes out on its clever little idea of selling to a commercial commer-cial broadcast the radio rights for all games played on the home grounds. But the fellow who gets the empty-bottles concession is the one who'll really clean up. "Lead Dollar's" Immortality. HOW some old friends do hang on! Twenty-five years ago or thereabouts, there-abouts, it appeared as a short story in Everybody's magazine under the title, "The Lead Dollar." Twenty years ago, believing I was using an actual occurrence which never before had been Actionized, Ac-tionized, I wrote it, too, and called it "Heart of Lead," and, barely in time, was saved by Bob Davis and Charlie Van Loan from the unintentional unin-tentional but nonetheless serious literary lit-erary crime of plagiarism. Fifteen years ago, Octavus Roy Cohen and I just did head off a young girl writer who already had sold the same tale to a pleased editor. edi-tor. I forget now what she called her version. Today, practically complete in all its sequences poker game, bogus money, practical jokes, good Samaritan, Sa-maritan, homeless girl, skeptical hotel clerk, pitiable suicide and all I find this dear old familiar standby stand-by in the current issue of a popular monthly with yet another author sponsoring it. Jack Garner's Activities. AT ONTH after month, Uncle Jack ivJ- Garner never said anything but "Ouch!" and then not for publication. pub-lication. It seemed that, if defeated, defeat-ed, he would go back from the comparative com-parative obscurity of Washington to the blazing prominence of Uvalde county, Texas, as the most finished specimen of sound-proof nominee American politics ever produced. i But he's no longer a perfect exam- ' pie to all innocent bystanders he's just a candidate. Having read his first speech, I'm reminded of the English gentlewoman gentlewom-an who fell on hard times but did have a few layin' hens left and was driven by necessity to peddle their product in the open street. So she picked out a back alley for her debut into vulgar trade, and, as she crept stealthily along, whispered whis-pered in a stricken undertone: I "Fresh eggs, tuppence. I hope no one sees me. Fresh eggs, tuppence. tup-pence. I hope no one hears me." IRVIN S. COBB. B WNU Sorvlu. |