Wet

If a white elephant, adorned with tar and talcum powder, strolled down Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, at 12 noon, trailing behind her a train of toy trolley cars, each painted, in large letters, with the name of that excellent hostelry, The Hotel Roosevelt, what would this be? It would be a publicity stunt. What would a hardboiled, wise, cynical, alert newspaper reporter think it was? He would think it was a front-page story. This, at least, was the opinion which intelligent persons were compelled to adopt after witnessing last week in Manhattan an example of journalistic susceptibility to unoriginal press-agenting.

There was an acrobatic dancer, one Mlle. Simone Roseray, who performed adequately enough, in a Manhattan night club. The press-agent for this night club, one Irving Strouse, cudgeled his wits to think of some smart dodge whereby he could place Mlle. Roseray and the club in which she performed, more conspicuously before the public eye than either had ever been before. With elaborate cunning, he constructed his plan. Mlle. Roseray would go into Central Park and give an imitation of a woman trying, not very hard, to commit suicide; she would be rescued by sensation seekers who, with shouts and squealings, might decoy a few newshawks to the scene of action. Newshawks would then fly to the home of Mlle. Roseray; there they would find a note addressed to the proprietor of her night club, a suicide note, of which this was to be the purport: "Because, you see, I love you." In the meantime, the rescued lady would be taken to a hospital, examined by a physician and let loose to an admiring world. After a day or two, there could be an advertisement in the papers saying: "Mlle. Roseray, now completely recovered from her recent indisposition, is dancing nightly. ..."

All happened as arranged. At an early hour on Sunday morning, just late enough to miss the Sunday morning papers and in time to give the reporters a full day to write a florid account of the event for Monday's packets, Mlle. Roseray waded into a small and shallow Central Park pond, splashed. A man dashed, fully garbed, toward the floundering female, who struggled away from him through the broken ice. "Mister, Mister, let me alone," she cried, but eventually permitted herself to be taken to the Lexington Avenue Hospital. Here, Mlle. Roseray was treated by a Dr. Martin J. Blank, who, despite his name, was no party to the plot; the man was put to bed so as to recover from a severe chill.

But were the reporters, when they arrived, as stupid as Press-agent Strouse had fondly hoped? They were, with one exception, more stupid. Forgetting that the most obvious moment for such a publicity stunt was precisely the moment at which it had occurred, they sleepily made up their minds that no one who did not really want to drown would have chosen such a time for submergence. They discovered a photograph of a man, across which was scribbled an illegible endearment, in Mlle. Roseray's handbag; but no clue was offered when they perceived that the image was that of the proprietor of her night club. The Lexington Avenue Hospital refused to inform them as to whether Mlle. Roseray would recover, or how soon. These details the reporters were compelled to invent.

The reporters wrote the story of Mlle. Roseray's inadequate demise with a tender and child-like sorrow. Their pathetic little fictions, when completed, were not consigned to wastebaskets by intelligent city editors; instead they were flapped onto front pages, otherwise almost bare of news, as is customary on metropolitan Monday mornings. The New York World had a picture spread. The Times had a front page and breakover. The American made it the day's feature. The tabloids, preparing to print pictures of a meal sack labeled "This is what the corpse of Mlle. Roseray looked like when it was dredged out of the puddle"; were able instead to slap somewhat naked pictures of her prominently on their covers.

Soon the fake was detected. The stories were all so insistent upon the name of Mlle. Roseray's stamping ground, upon the name of her partner, upon the tremendous reputation she had built up for herself, upon her beauty, upon the loss to the theatrical world which would have been the result of her decease, that astute editors became suspicious. The next day some of them printed stories about how the fake had been effected, not forgetting to stress the foxlike guile of Mlle. Roseray's press-agent who had fooled all the clever reporters. The witty, wisecracking Walter Winchell, columnist to the pornoGraphic, gumchewers' sheetlet, alone had the grace, in this second and even less justified burst of free advertising, to praise that rakish, lean and sporting sheet, the New York Telegraph; its reporter had entirely disregarded the melodramatic antics of poor Mlle. Roseray.

Later in the week, there were varying comments on this feast of fake fatalities and free-for-all ballyhoo. Some criticised the apparent foolishness of the press. Others gave great praise to Press-agent Irving Strouse. They said: "Certain flowers have a brief but repetitive bloom; likewise a fashion, a joke, a publicity stunt. Press-agent Strouse was clever in that he accurately gauged the precise degree of reportorial gullibility; newshawks are perhaps to be excused for supposing that no one would dare attempt so blatant a hoax in the hope of practicing a deception. Press-agent Strouse indubitably won the game and the game was worth the candy." Smiling slyly, Press-agent Strouse despatched to the newsheets an advertisement for which he would have to pay in cash, an advertisement which he had doubtless prepared before the first account of Mlle. Roseray's performance had been printed. The advertisement read: "ROSERAY, fully recovered from her recent indisposition. . . ."

The Roseray extravaganza had no sooner disappeared from front pages than another and far more laughable divertissement or, more properly, advertisement, took its place. Miss Mary Louise Texas Guinan, who is the proprietress of an excellent night club, took a stance on the edge of the same puddle in Central Park; she watched several jejune gentlemen, wrapped in coonskin shrouds, pulling a body from out of the water. Newsgatherers, a little backward and timid lest someone should play a trick on them, gathered to see what was going on. "Who is she?" they enquired methodically when the wet cotton corpse had been stretched out on the bank to dry. "It's me," cried Miss Guinan, flinging herself upon the still damp cadaver and kissing its sticky face. The proprietor of the cabaret in which Mlle. Roseray conducts her undulations was lamentably not present. Miss Guinan too had apparently been his admirer; she too had attempted death for his sake. Surrounded by photographers and pretty girls from her chorus, she simply said: "I died because I love him." It was admitted that Mme. Guinan had reached the first page through her own sagacity rather than, as had Mlle. Roseray, through reportorial and editorial avarice or imbecility.