30-c- Hole Sirs:

In TIME, Jan. 28, under Cinema, I read the astounding statement that a shot of the Black Hole of Calcutta cost $30,000!! Follows a cut that doesn't look more than 3O-c- worth.

Now what in the nation did they spend the remaining $29,999.70 for? Or did they, perchance scoop said hole out of a gold mine?

MADGE M. RICE Detroit, Mich.

Sirs:

You say "Black Hole of Calcutta cost $30,000, time, 15 seconds, and I accept that as true. My dear husband says I am too credulous to take in such "bosh." Who is right?

HELGA BUSBY Des Moines, Iowa

"Bosh" it was. The Black Hole was photographed in less than five hours at a cost of about $2,500. Items: 146 extras @ $7.50 per day, $1,095; three cameramen, crew of 60 gripmen. electricians, property men--total wages $1,500. The replica of the Black Hole was a boxlike structure built on an ordinary sound stage. In succumbing to what Producer Darryl Zanuck calls "pressagent bookkeeping," TIME was joined by many a columnist.--ED.

$30,000 Drop Sirs:

In your review of The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (TIME, Jan. 21) you report that most of the picture was filmed on location within 50 miles of Hollywood.

True some shots were taken at Chatsworth, within the radius given. But for two weeks this mountain town, [200 mi. from Hollywood] was overrun with synthetic Bengalese, an increase of 31 1/3 % in population. Paramount dropped $30,000 of the million and a half here, gave most their first glimpse of an elephant, almost succeeded in driving a few of our topers into taking the pledge. My congregation upped one, a gloriously illuminated grip-man, one of eight rewarded with a gallon-of-whiskey bonus by the director for working all Saturday night.

... If your readers will look up the company street they will glimpse the top of the U. S., Mt. Whitney. Despite your account, Whitney is not yet within the Los Angeles city limits, nor has it gone Hollywood.

(Rev.) JOHN J. CROWLEY Santa Rosa Church Lone Pine. Calif.

P. S. Oil for the Lamps of China is on location here today with four camels. I may get my convivial sheep into dry pastures yet.

Boston Sequel Sirs:

No crusader TIME (Jan 28) might well and justifiably have juxtaposed "Protestants & Legion" and "Boston v. O'Casey". For the encouragement given the first inevitably results in events like the second.

Well-meaning though the Legion of Decency may be, like all other prohibitive institutions it places too great a weapon in the hands of prejudice. After all that had been said of the O'Casey play it seems rather a pity that one man, and it really was one man, should have been able to prevail over the desires of a considerable, intelligent population. Boston's prohibitors permit Minsky to run without let while they ban Strange Interlude and Within the Gates. They cavil at Rabelais and Joyce while smiling tolerantly (and probably reading themselves) Smokehouse Monthly. The Specialist perhaps had a bigger success in the Athens of America than anywhere else.

Sequel to your story of last week. Public readings were banned. Ministers who announced intentions to read the play and then preach upon it were threatened. People whose names are by no means among the liberals wrote hot letters to the Transcript which receives communications on subjects of this sort with rather more interest than the wheedling Herald, morning paper of the intelligentsia. An enterprising entrepreneur advertised trip to New York, hotel accommodations and an orchestra seat to Within the Gates all for $16.50.

No Catholic your writer, but one who has always admired most of the history and much of the accomplishment of that institution, he now feels that the hand of the Legion which really is the hand of Rome lies too heavy on the land. Painters, poets, and even journalists will feel it next, but no longer within the glove.

JOHN ELY BURCHARD Boston, Mass.

Forty-six Bostonians made the excursion to Manhattan, most of them in a streamlined railroad coach named for the occasion The O'Casey Special.--ED.

Longwell Like Lee Sirs:

. . . It seems to me that in your Letters department in the Jan. 28 issue of TIME you did a very ignoble thing, in using your editorial power to pillory Lieut. Longwell for his criticism of your article on strippers. . . . It is easy for some of your readers to stigmatize the Lieutenant as a "bigot" and a 'goody-goody." . . . Any right-thinking man concerned for his children must sympathize with him. . .

A hundred years ago there was another lieutenant in the Engineers, Robert E. Lee. I wonder if he would not have done just what Lieut. Longwell has done. . . .

(REV. ) PAUL T. STONESIFER President

The Pittsburgh Synod of the Reformed Church in the U. S. Mt. Pleasant, Pa.

Sirs:

A practicing Christian must become accustomed to being held in derision by the faithless. We need more goody-goodies in the Army and elsewhere. . . .

C. J. WILKIN Gardiner, N. Y.

Sirs:

. . . Lieut. Longwell is an example of what the leaders of our Army should be. He is a man thoroughly versed in military technique, engineering ability, philosophic aptitude and he is, above all, an officer and a gentleman. Those of us throughout the U. S. who have studied and disputed with the Lieutenant are inclined to regard the pseudo-liberalists who deride him with disgust, and to say with the poet of old margaritae ante porcos.*

B. J. HUGER St Louis, Mo.

Byway Car (Cont'd)

Sirs:

Dead right are the Sharsmiths in their criticism of automobile manufacturers who fail to produce a car with sufficient clearance to permit its use on the highways and byways, as well as on the speedways of the nation (TIME, Feb. 4). Hence the continued use by farmers and others of worn-out "model T's" and obsolete Chevies that otherwise would have been scrapped years ago. . . .

If [the automobile manufacturers] had their ear close to the ground, they would find that there are still some millions of Americans left who would like to own an automobile designed with sufficient road clearance to permit them to travel occasionally on country roads away from the maddening rush and with sufficient head room to permit a man six feet tall to sit upright and see something of the country through which he is traveling, instead of . . . being obliged to double up over the steering wheel like a half-closed jackknife in order even to see traffle signals.

WILLIAM CHURCH DAVIS Berkeley, Calif.

Sirs: IF TIME LIVED ON AN RED ROUTE WHERE ROADS ARE ONLY A NAME IT WOULD PROBABLY BE FAMILIAR WITH THE 20-INCH WHEEL HIGH ROAD CLEARANCE PLYMOUTH. YOU MAY BE SURE SHARSMITHS PRAYERS AND REQUIREMENTS WILL HAVE BEEN FULLY ANSWERED BY ALERT CHRYSLER PLYMOUTH DEALER BY THE TIME THIS WIRE REACHES YOUR COLUMN.

A.B. Dowd Chrysler Sales Corp. Detroit, Mich.

Sirs:

As members of Chrysler's versatile Engineering Department, we wish to point out to Nomadic Readers Sharsmith that, for the last three years we have built a special model known to the engineering fraternity as the "High Wheeler, based on the Plymouth fleet model. . . .

Cause of development: complaints from rural mail carriers that mud is no respecter of streamlined shapes.

No thing of beauty according to modern standards, this car has been made to join the great unwashed army of Model "T" and "A Fords that have dominated the rural field so long. . . .

H. N. ROBERTS P. B. ROBERTS Detroit, Mich.

Discussion of "byway cars" will be continued in LETTERS, published fortnightly by TIME Inc.--ED.

First Fountain Pens Sirs:

I was disappointed to notice under Milestones in your Feb. 4 issue that TIME had copied the error of many newspapers in attributing the invention of the fountain pen to the late Paul E. Wirt.

Mr. Wirt's overhead feed patent was granted in 1885 whereas the fissure feed patent of Lewis Edson Waterman is dated Feb. 12, 1884. There were many attempts to make a fountain pen prior to Mr. Waterman's invention. It is not known who first conceived the idea of a fountain pen or who first attempted to make one. A crude fountain pen was discovered in the ruins of Pompeii and other ink-containing instruments were known to be in the possession of King Louis XIV of France and Thomas Jefferson. In this country alone several hundred patents for "fountain pens" were issued prior to Mr. Waterman's patent. None of these early pens was really satisfactory and, therefore, Mr. Waterman is considered the inventor of the fountain pen because his was the first practical and efficient one. The importance of his invention can be gathered from the fact that today, long after his patent has expired, the principle of his fissure feed is in use in all fountain pens.

The experience attributed to Mr. Wirt is strikingly similar to the story of Mr. Waterman's invention of the fountain pen which was published last year in connection with the fiftieth anniversary of his invention. Mr. Waterman, in the 1880's, was an insurance salesman and lost a good-sized contract because the so-called fountain pen which he was carrying refused to write and then flooded ink all over the application to be signed. This unfortunate experience determined him to create an efficient pen. His first type, although filled with a medicine dropper, was not cumbersome and quite a number of these first pens are still giving satisfactory writing service today.

FRANK D. WATERMAN JR. L. E. Waterman Co. New York City

"Waste of Money"

Sirs: The $100,000 that you put into The March of Time on the screen is a waste of money. . . The photography was poor, events shown were dramatized before on the air by you and the picture does not live up to the publicity.

I would advise you either to improve The March of Time or else save yourself the expense. . . .

NEWTON ROSENBERG Chicago, 111.

"It Must Continue"

Sirs:

While exhilarated from the world premiere of The March of Time on the screen, I want to commend you for the finest historical drama I have seen depicted in movies.

It had all the verve, compactness and stimulus of your printed page and radio broadcasts, and above both it had the thrilling appeal of seeing history march on. The Japanese section was superb.

Showing here with David Copperfield in its second week, I was glad to again see that great movie in order to see The March of Tune. It must continue.

CHARLES EDWARD THOMAS Indianapolis, Ind.

*Pearls before swine.

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