Ballyhoo's Baby

Sad-faced Norman Hume Anthony got fired as editor of Judge nine years ago and spent several months biting his nails in Frank & Jack's speakeasy on Manhattan's West 45th Street before Publisher George T. Delacorte hired him to put out a bathroom burlesque of bathroom advertising called Ballyhoo. In four issues circulation went up to 1,000,000. Long after later issues and lesser imitators had made the idea as stale as a used towel, Messrs, Delacorte & Anthony continued to put out Ballyhoo. It shrank to digest size, became a quarterly. Finally, two months ago, it folded.

In Ballyhoo's heyday Editor Anthony wrote a musical show, also called Ballyhoo, which profited from the magazine's popularity. Wracking his brains for a new magazine idea, he hit upon the reverse procedure. With Hellzapoppin still a sellout after eight months on Broadway, Norman Anthony offered Producers Olsen & Johnson half a cent a copy for permission to use the title for a magazine.* Having little ready cash, he got a printer and a paperseller to take a chance on three issues, bought $300 worth of art, then sat down in his room in the Parkside Hotel and wrote 32 pages of gags. This week the first issue of Hellzapoppin will appear on the newsstands ("15-c---But Why Buy It?"), fully justifying its subtitle of "The World's Screwiest Magazine."

Hellzapoppin offers on page 1 a calendar for July, a weather report for August (rain), a picture of a blonde undressing and directions to find page 2. Pages 2 and 3 are mostly margin, "so that NO one can read OVER YOUR SHOULDER!" Page 4 is a set of false whiskers, page 5 a peepshow. Other features: a two-way editorial ("Can this go on? Sure! No!"), a page of letters to readers ("instead of printing letters from readers who tell us how lousy our magazine is"). The back cover, an "acquaintance maker," says: "Yoo hoo! How's about a date tonight? (All you have to do is take a seat opposite a pretty girl and hold the magazine so that she can see this.)"

After that, presumably, you have no further need for Hellzapoppin.

* Last week King Features announced a new comic strip, Elza Poppin, to be written by Olsen & Johnson.

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