Untaxed Treats

Hollywood and Broadway rubbed their palms gleefully over the outcome of a tax "test case" decided last week in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Manhattan. Appellant was plump, dark Actor Sidney Blackmer. From his taxable income in 1927, Actor Blackmer had deducted $1,687.10 as money spent entertaining critics and influential acquaintances who might further his professional career. The Board of Tax Appeals had previously turned thumbs down on the deduction, just as it had last year when Mr. Blackmer's divorced wife Lenore Ulric claimed exemption for $11,130 worth of "donated favors" to "newspaper critics and others," to the vast annoyance of Manhattan's critical fraternity (TIME, Feb. 20, 1933).

Expense items listed by Mr. Blackmer included $400 for a party for Writers Heywood Broun, Mark Hellinger, Laurence Stallings & others, a $25 treat for Atlanta "social leaders and clubwomen," $75 lavished on the French consul and others at Chicago, an unnamed sum spent on "Mr. & Mrs. Biddle" at Pinehurst, N. C. Host Blackmer also said he had cast a few croutons on the political waters of the nation's capital. "In Washington," he testified, 'T entertained almost every night at my hotel various representatives of the Army and Navy, particularly Captain Joel Boone of the White House [President Coolidge's physician]. Captain Boone stood in good favor with the Press and Cabinet and leaders in political life, and for them to appear at our play (The Springboard, no success] at his suggestion would mean space in the newspapers."

The Court's opinion, welcomed by many a rich actor and actress anxious to avoid high brackets, found "no valid reason to doubt the testimony of the taxpayer," unprecedentedly recognized the value to an actor of the patronage of newspaper men, clubwomen, social leaders, White House physicians, Cabinet members, politicians.

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