Fun at a Murder Trial

A procedure not uncommon in U. S. newspaper offices is what is known as "kidding the pants off a story." Last week the Press of Chicago, as if sensitive about its reputation for glorifying crime, elected to "kid the pants off" a murder trial.

The defendant was an attractive Polish woman named Mrs. Dorothy Mysza Pollak, 26, who shot her husband in the -eye. Recalling the devastating satire in Maurine Watkins' play Chicago, in which blonde Roxie Hart was in a somewhat similar plight, Chicago newspapers took satire into their own hands, tagged Mrs. Pollak as "Chicago's most beautiful slayer."

Tribune and Post printed comparatively restrained reports. But the Daily News and Hearst's Herald & Examiner scarcely tried to conceal their evident belief that Mrs. Pollak's efforts to escape punishment were as ludicrous and hilarious as Roxie Hart's, also as empty of merit and as likely to succeed. The Herald & Examiner assigned its cinema reviewer, Carol Frink, to cover the trial as she might cover a comic melodrama.

The elements of the case easily lent themselves to burlesque. Mrs. Pollak, who wore her long bobbed hair curled at the ends Garbo-wise, had been married three years to Joseph Pollak, back-of-the-stockyards bootlegger and money lender. She suspected him of philandering with a Mrs. Julia Cebulski. One afternoon last July Mrs. Pollak was unable to locate either her husband or Mrs. Cebulski. When her husband returned to the flat that evening she shot him. Said she afterward: "That was a dirty trick I did to poor old Joe."

Following her surrender to police, and conferences with a lawyer named O'Brien, Mrs. Pollak revealed that her husband had been in the habit of mauling her when she displeased him, that she had shot ("to frighten him'') because he had come after her with a knife. Police at the apartment had discovered no knife. On second investigation of the house a lawyer named Hoffman produced a three-inch paring knife which he said he had found there. Then Mrs. Pollak's platinum-blonde cousin, a Mrs. Victoria Schultz, "eyewitness," supplied a huge carving knife. Lawyer Hoffman left the State.

Mrs. Pollak elected to be tried by the court without jury, first woman murder defendant to avail herself of that new prerogative in Chicago courts. Excerpts from the newspaper reports:

Daily News: "Virtue, triumphant though weary, and womanhood rising strong amid tears to make the ultimate sacrifice of a husband, were tastefully described in court today as Mrs. Pollak began her march toward an acquittal for the shooting of good old Joe Pollak, her onetime spouse. . . . While the State was hinting that she was a murderess and her own counsel was describing her as a wronged woman who had never done harm to anyone save for one slight killing, her pose remained the same. . . . She looked like the lady on the dollar, only more expensive."

Herex: "The cast, though accidentally chosen, was splendid for type. . . . The star, Dorothy Pollak, pretty enough to get by if she knows her lines, and simply but smartly dressed in the funeral finery she wore on the sad occasion when she tried to hurl herself into the late Joe's grave (see earlier installments). . . ."

News: "The medical examiner found also that Mr. Pollak had had muscular heart trouble of long standing and some kidney ailments. When the question was put to him squarely . . . he stated it to be his opinion that Joe Pollak had died of a bullet wound in his head, thus ruining the last hope of his sad-eyed widow that he might have died of something else."

Herex: "Quoting and imitating Joe, who is dead and consequently unable to tell his own story, Mrs. Schultz gnashed her teeth, assumed a diabolical leer, and cried: 'Didn't I tell you if you ever went gadding to that saloon again I'd kill you?' That was what poor Joe is supposed to have told his misunderstood wife before she resorted to her little gun to correct his manners."

News: "Dorothy Pollak, the wistfully beautiful widow of poor Joe (I-Wish-I-Was-in-t he-Grave-with-Him) Pollak, wrapped in grief and shedding tears like pearls, took the stand to describe her musketry, the gentlest wife who ever shot a husband. . . . 'The State has not even established that a murder was committed,' said Lawyer O'Brien. And many thought he was about to argue that Mr. Pollak had been shot in the open season for Pollaks."

After a half-hour's consideration of evidence, the court acquitted Mrs. Pollak. For several moments she remained dumbly in her chair because she had not grasped the meaning of the word "acquitted." Later she found her tongue, declared: "Judge Fisher is a nice man. He looked at it sensibly." Then she signed a contract to appear for three weeks at the State-Congress Theatre in burlesque at $1,000 a week. Cousin Victoria Schultz got only $250 a week.

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