United Airman

In The New Yorker three years ago Poet E. B. White set down an appraisal of Radioracle Harold Thomas Henry (Boake) Carter. Wrote he: I like to hear him summon us With all things ominous: Munitions makers, plotting gain, Asylums bulging with insane, Cancers that give no hint of pain, Insurgency in northern Spain, And rivers swollen with the rain. For Boake, Has spoke, And it's no joke.

No joke indeed were the broadcasts of Boake Carter. In his peremptory, clipped British baritone, he gloomed about C. I. O., Communism, the state of military aviation, the Roosevelt Administration, the British Empire. For accusing Governor Hoffman of New Jersey of making a political football of the Lindbergh case, he was sued for $100,000 (later the suit was settled amicably); for baiting C. I. O., he was picketed at Philadelphia's WCAU, from which his program originated. He was called a "mercenary poseur" by the late Newsman Paul Y. Anderson, described as "Croak" Carter by Harold Ickes. Nevertheless his following was enormous, and when Philco Radio and Television Corp. failed to renew his contract in 1938, he was snapped up by General Foods. But when his contract ran out, General Foods did not sign him up again.

When Carter vacated the networks, he was cashing in at the rate of $150,000 a year. Since then he has earned $550 a week with a syndicated column that goes to 52 papers, gets $500 apiece from lectures. But neither medium has given him the satisfaction he used to get out of an ethereal brood. This week that satisfaction will be his, for he begins (at $1,000 a week) as commentator for United Air Lines over an MBS coast-to-coast network.

Carter's United show will be the first regular coast-to-coast program ever sponsored by an airline. Idea behind it is to get business in the winter months when air travel slacks off. In the nature of a test campaign, the program, which Carter himself promoted, will cost United $50,000 for 13 weeks, may eventually be piped without commercials to many an MBS station remote from United's route. No fear has United that Carter will alienate any of its customers. The company feels his truculent past will attract listeners, while his knowledge of air transportation will give the show an entertaining professional flavor. Carter, who served in the R. A. F. in World War I, is an airplane fan, has traveled over 200,000 miles by air, fancies himself as an expert on aviation problems. A chum of United's President William Patterson, he will be closely watched in his newscasting by N. W. Ayer and MBS, will try to keep his program "in good taste and without controversy."

Unusually subdued is Boake Carter today. "When you've suddenly had the ground cut from under you," he says, "your sense of values is restored." Although he intends to vote for Willkie, he will not tangle with the New Dealers if he can help it. Says he: "What's the use of calling somebody cockeyed, foolish or stupid when everybody is on edge?"

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