Racetrack Tycoon

Selling newspapers in Chicago is a hard-boiled business. To the strong-arm methods of oldtime Chicago circulation managers some historians trace the origin of gangsterism. Famed in Chicago for circulation getting is the name of Annenberg. Max Annenberg was circulation manager of the Patterson-McCormick Tribune, now holds a similar job for the other Patterson-McCormick paper, Manhattan's Daily News. Equally proficient and long employed by Publisher Hearst was Max's brother Moses. Last week, quite unintentionally, Brother Moses made news. Virtually unknown to the world at large, Moe Annenberg has become a "big shot" in publishing on his own. The news was that he had bought out his two partners for about $2,000,000 in cash.

The legend of tall, cadaverous, unsociable Moe Annenberg is that he came from Germany and started in as a circulation hustler for Hearst's Chicago papers. From Chicago he moved to Milwaukee and started a newspaper distributing agency which he still owns. Arthur Brisbane went to Milwaukee, bought the Milwaukee Sentinel (later taken over by Hearst who in 1929 sold it to Paul Block) and made Moe editor & publisher. Afterwards Hearst took Moe to New York. There in 1921 Moe got into partnership with a pair of gentlemen named Joe Bannon and Hugh Murray. Aware of the huge public that follows horse-racing and of the money that flows freely through that public in betting, they bought the Daily Racing Form, a tipster sheet published in New York, Chicago, Miami, New Orleans, San Francisco. As Racing Form flourished, they gathered together a whole stableful of racing sheets including Daily Running Horse, The Racing Record, Sporting Times, which they ran through two companies, the Walter Holding Co. and A.B. & M. Corp. Later they brought out Radio Guide and Baltimore Brevities (for the last they were all indicted for sending obscene matter through the mails). Annenberg also bought an interest in the Morning Telegraph, a Manhattan daily devoted to the tracks and the theatre. He is also supposed to have built up a string of newsagencies throughout the country.

From the shoddy throngs that follow the horses, a steady stream of dollars flowed in the direction of Mr. Annenberg's tipster enterprises. He branched into banking, brokerage, real estate. Only he knows the full range of his interests, and Moe Annenberg does not talk about himself. He does not even like to have it said that he has made millions, but today, father of eight children (seven of them daughters, all married), he owns a ranch in Wyoming, "the show place of the Black Hills," from which like Hearst at San Simeon he rules a far-flung empire by private wires. He has also an estate at Sands Point, L.I., and this year he bought the magnificent Miami villa of the late Albert Russel Erskine.

There is nothing illegal about tipster sheets, per se, but Moe Annenberg hates publicity about his string because there is enough trouble in the business as it is. Rivals or enemies mysteriously wrecked Racing Form's shop not long ago. And between Moe and his partners there was a bitter quarrel. That was, it is said, what made him buy them out. They had been suing him, asking for receivers for the properties, since Depression forced down the string's sales. The betting public was content to get its tips from 3-c- daily papers (Racing Form, Running Horse, Racing Record cost 15-c- each in New York, 20-c- in other cities). And to make matters worse Moe was putting out his Telegraph, in which Partners Bannon and Murray had no "slice," at the same hour Racing Form went on sale. Now he will own the whole show, do as he likes.

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