Boldness v. Wit

Like oldtime court jesters, newspaper colyumists are privileged--nay, obliged-- to play horse with the serious news of the day. But just as the jester was in danger of having his head lopped off if his boldness should outrun his wit, so must the colyumist watch carefully lest he shock the Average Reader's sensibilities. Readers of Colyumist Harry Irving Phillips (''The Sun Dial") in the New York Sun one day last week wondered whether he had gone too far.

Colyumist Phillips' offering that day was a "letter" from President Hoover, inviting Bryan Untiedt, 13-year-old hero of the school-bus catastrophe in Colorado (TIME. April 6, 13), to visit the White house. Excerpt :

''There is a peculiar bond of sympathy between us, my boy, and I am in a particularly fine position to appreciate what you have suffered, as I, too, have been through a terrible storm. In fact, the storm I have been caught in has lasted two years and I am still stalled in the bus. . . . When I got in the bus every thing was warm and sunny. . . . Almost from the moment I got . . . under way, however, the temperature began falling. I never knew it could get so cold in such a short time. . . . It blew some of the business boys and bankers right through the bus windows. They managed to scramble back again however. I called a conference . . . [and] issued a statement assuring everybody that the storm had passed and not to worry. Well, no sooner did the words leave my mouth than another gale came up. Then it began to snow. ... I looked around and saw that one of the boys, Charlie Curtis, had a coating of ice on his moustache. Claudius Huston had both ears nipped and . . . Andy Mellon . . . was sitting on the floor of the bus rubbing his big toe. . . .

''Well, Bryan, you were rescued after a short time, but here I am with my party still stalled in the drift. ... I doubt that I will ever get over it. So you and I have a lot in common and we should have an interesting time matching experiences."

In the real bus tragedy, three small children were really frozen to death, two died later.

London Calling

The political fate of the Chicago mayor whose slogan was "Keep King George Out of Chicago," and who had threatened to "bust King George on the snoot," was front-page material in London last week. Nearly every paper in the city reported the defeat of William Hale Thompson (TIME, April 13), in page-wide banners and lengthy editorials. Even in Paris the headline of La Liberte was BIG BILL BEATEN.

As soon as they learned the outcome of the election, six London dailies telephoned across the ocean for interviews with Mayor-Elect Anton Joseph Cermak. Mirror, Mail, Express, Herald, Post, News in turn put nearly identical questions.

"Do you attribute your election to Thompson's campaign against King George?"

"The answer is: not appreciably. Only that the slogan helped among other things to convince some people that they had been fooled long enough."

There were questions concerning reform, the prospective status of Al Capone, crime in general. Each reporter hung up his phone well satisfied with a thoroughgoing interview. What he did not know was that he had been talking not to Mayor-Elect Cermak but to a self-appointed spokesman, John F. Delaney.

"A Lot of Fun"

From a Manhattan pulpit last week handsome Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin, president of Union Theological Seminary, sermonized the virtue of monogamous marriage with love as its basis. Said he:

"A most apt comment on the papal encyclical concerning marriage appeared in The New Yorker. The article said: 'What Pope Pius seemed to us to have missed about Christian marriage was this: that with all its falling from grace, it is still a lot of fun.'*

"That magazine is seldom quoted from the pulpit. I thank God for The New Yorker in this case."

Front Page

WALTER BURNS: Get Hildy to tell you some time about how we stole Old Lady Haggerty's stomach off the coroner's physician. We proved she was poisoned.

HILDY: We had to hide for a week. . . .

Nearly everyone knows that the Hildy Johnson of these lines from the stage and screen play The Front Page was a literal translation of Reporter J. Hilding Johnson of the Chicago Herald & Examiner, who covered Cook County Criminal Courts for 15 years and was tsar of the building's pressroom. But only newsmen knew that such an exploit as stomach-stealing was not exaggerated as an instance of the real Johnson's work.

Last week Colyumist Louis Sobol of the New York Evening Graphic printed an autobiographical column prepared for him by the real Hildy Johnson. Death took Hildy Johnson last month before he had finished the sketch, so Johnson's good friend George E. Wright of the Chicago Tribune supplied a few more chapters. Excerpts:

"Then there was the night Giuseppe Yiano was to hang. Hildy wanted to know whether hanging really killed a man. He arranged through Viano's family to have the body immediately after the trap fell. They had a car and doctors waiting outside. With the use of adrenalin they brought Viano back to life for a few moments. Following the exposure of this a ruling was made that the vital organs of all condemned persons be removed before they were officially pronounced dead."

"Ben Hecht and Charlie MacArthur dropped into the pressroom one day during a poker game. Hildy asked the boys to sit in. 'Hildy,' said Hecht, 'Charlie and I have written a play.' I bet it's lousy,' chimed Hildy. 'No, it's a newspaper play . . . and we want to make you the leading character.' 'Do I get free tickets?' . . . 'Sure,' said Hecht and MacArthur in chorus. 'Okey,' said Hildy. 'Why the hell don't you deal the cards?' . . . He might have held out for a price and royalties, but that was Hildy."

Reporter Johnson got his free tickets for the opening in Manhattan but he never saw the play. On his way, he was hit by a truck and severely injured. He sued for $40,000, settled for $11,000, and enjoyed telling friends who pitied him for his suffering: "Go get hit by a truck and provide for your family like I did."

Hildy Johnson died of a stomach ailment a week before the film version of The. Front Page appeared in Chicago.

* Two years ago Writer Elwyn Brooks ("Andy'') White of The New Yorker married his staff-mate Mrs. Katherine Angell.

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