Dirt

The discovery that it's smart to be bawdy may possibly be credited to magazine artists of the Arno-Soglow-Klein-Steig school. In The New Yorker their drawings are politely risque. In published albums (like Stag at Eve) they are elegantly ribald. From its first issue last summer Ballyhoo capitalized the discovery that smut, when smart, could tap an unashamed market. It based its appeal chiefly upon the business of making fun of the advertising business, but knew and pursued the sale value of scatology.

By its astounding success Ballyhoo opened the gates to a flood of imitators intent upon outdoing it in bawdry alone. Result: on newsstands of the land last week appeared two new magazines, "Aw Nerts!" and Slapstick which, with other recent offerings (Tickle-Me-Too, Hooey) comprise as vile a mess of reading as has ever been put on sale.

Dirty magazines as such are not new. "French" love story magazines have long graced the back rows of newsstands, and there has been a steady market for smoking-car books like Captain Billy's Whiz Bang. But one rarely encounters a patron actually purchasing them, much less reading them on his way home from the office. The new pornography bids for --and has been getting--admittance to decent society along with the Saturday Evening Post and the evening paper. All are vaguely identified with Ballyhoo.

"Aw Nerts!", a crude imitation of Ballyhoo, is perpetrated by an obscure publisher in Manhattan. Slapstick, published by Harold Hersey, occasional associate of Bernarr ("Body-Love") Macfadden, is not itself an imitation, but a successor to Tickle-Me-Too (also Kersey's). TIME makes no attempt to report the contents of these smutsheets since an accurate report would necessitate reprinting the unprintable.

Meanwhile Ballyhoo fears direct competition much less than the possibility that it will be classed with its completely bawdy contemporaries. Accordingly Editor Norman Hume Anthony essayed a clean-up of the February issue (to appear this week). With certain glaring exceptions, improvement was noticeable.

The fact that the Beech-Nut Gum advertisement on the back cover was paid for, might well have been guessed by the casual reader. It showed the caricature of a Negro girl alongside the gum-slogan: "Makes the next smoke taste better." Other paid advertisements in the issue, more disrespectful to the product and much funnier, are harder to identify.

The enormous sale of Ballyhoo (nearing 2,000,000) has lined with unaccustomed gold the pockets of youthful Editor Anthony, who was made a partner by Publisher George T. Delacorte, Jr.

In the year following his discharge from the editorship of Life in 1929 Mr. Anthony, onetime comic artist, could find no job. He was practically down and out when Publisher Delacorte sent for him, offered him $500 to prepare the first issue of a funny magazine--any funny magazine--if he could do it at an additional total cost of $500. Anthony snatched the job, bethought himself of the oldtime successful burlesque issues of Life and Judge (both of which he once edited), proposed to Delacorte a magazine to burlesque advertising (TIME, May 11). The publisher demurred for a full month, paid Anthony $75 a week while demurring, finally told him to go ahead. After the first issue proved a success, the partnership was arranged.

Editor Anthony works day & night for three weeks of the month preparing the magazine with only the help of his old friend Phil Rosa. Overhead is almost nil, Ballyhoo's office being a 12 x 15 room on the Delacorte floor. But where he could pay only $15 for a contributed drawing at first, he can now spend up to $150. At 1,500,000 sale, total receipts from newsstand sales would run about $75,000 a month, of which at least $30,000 a month may well be net profit. Editor Anthony lives in a midtown Manhattan apartment, goes weekends to Pelham, N. Y. to join his wife and two children. He has had two playscripts making the rounds of agents for years.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.