1937 Games

If it is true that the devil finds work for idle hands to do, the No. i U. S. Mephistopheles is currently a mild little Philadelphian named Charles Darrow. Mr. Darrow's claim to the title, based on Monopoly, U. S. parlor craze of 1936, was last week reinforced when Parker Brothers began to distribute his second invention for idle hands. The new Darrow game is Bulls & Bears. Success of Monopoly, which was last week estimated to be in its sixth million and selling faster than ever, gave Bulls & Bears a pre-publication sale of 100,000, largest on record for a new game. Parker Brothers expect it and a more morbid diversion called Jury Box to be the major new rivals to contract bridge for 1937. Trend in U. S. games demonstrated by both Bulls & Bears and Jury Box is realism, which recurs in parlor sports at 30-year intervals. Monopoly, based on real-estate tradings, and G-men, invented by onetime G-Man Melvin Purvis, were the first non-escapist parlor sports since just after the turn of the Century when Bunco and Pit, based on Chicago's wheat trading, were highly fashionable. Bulls & Bears, played on a parcheesi-like board, concerns stock purchases, pools, dividends and taxes. The object is to acquire corners on as many stocks as possible, force other players into bankruptcy. Dice determine stock prices.

A shrewd speculator can acquire valuable privileges by buying a seat on the Stock Exchange. Its copyright title is derived from a card game called Make a Million, in which the pack contains bull and bear cards. Jury Box is an effort to combine in practical form the sadistic appeal of crime stories with the masochistic fascination of the puzzle. It is a box of six envelopes, each of which contains a description of, and all the material necessary for, the solution of a serious crime. The host acts as district attorney, passes out evidence to his guests, who form the jury. Inventor of Jury Box is Criminologist Roy Post, whose other discoveries include a device for taking fingerprints off corpses. Inventor Charles Darrow, before he began to monopolize the field of after-dinner entertainment, was a prosperous engineer. When he lost his job and his money in 1930, he got along by selling gadgets, doing odd jobs like mending furniture and building his friends' fishponds in the Philadelphia suburbs. The first Monopoly board was a bit of oilcloth left over from a roll used to cover a kitchen table. In 933> two years after he had designed the game, Inventor Darrow put it on the market privately. Since Parker Brothers took it over in the spring of 1935, Monopoly, first smash hit perfected by an amateur parlor-game inventor in 35 years, has been translated into seven languages. In the U. S., Atlantic City lots are the basis of trading.

European translations of Monopoly concern real-estate deals in London, Paris or Stockholm. With his Monopoly fortune, Inventor Darrow has bought a farm at Echo Lake, Pa. He leads a simple, nongregarious life, likes dozing after dinner.

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