Censored Bellwether

Last week Hollywood Gabster Jimmie Fidler tried to take to the CBS air with a bit of advice for a pair of cinemastars. He wanted to tell Laraine Day she had made a mistake in vacating her perdurable role as the nurse in the Dr. Kildare series, and to adjure George Brent not to go around explaining why he wouldn't marry bouncy Ann Sheridan. Promptly CBS censors decided the items were on the dubious side, suggested he toss them out of his script. Thereupon Fidler asked his sponsor, the Tayton Co. (cosmetics), to cancel his contract so that he could betake himself to the more liberal mikes of Mutual.

Like most gossips, Jimmie Fidler, onetime extra, onetime editor of Screenland, does not underestimate his own importance. As soon as he broke with CBS, he prepared an official statement, lugubriously entitled "Radio Censorship Unbearable," sent it to FCC Chairman J. Lawrence Fly, and Senators like Wheeler & Nye. His chief gripe: CBS wouldn't let him rate pictures (according to a chromatic scheme running from "No bells" for rotten to "Four bells" for a smash) the way he wanted to. Moaned he:

"The Columbia Broadcasting System insisted that I must give a 'favorable' notice (three or more bells) to all so-called 'big pictures' reviewed by me. . . . Had I been willing to compromise my own honest opinion ... I might have continued my CBS association. . . . But I would have moved about with a hanging head, ashamed of my own deceit."

To Hollywood reporters he moaned more. He mentioned sadly an occasion a few weeks back when he was prevented from quoting a piece in Photoplay in which one "Fearless" complained that Myrna Loy had "stenographer's spread," Gary Cooper and James Stewart spindle legs. Fidler also pointed out that one of his aerial "editorials" against war propaganda in the films had been squelched.

Tayton Co., whose sales have soared since Fidler signed up, agreed to follow him to Mutual, starting afresh for 13 weeks. Huffed CBS: "If he has found a network which will wholly accept his views . . . we are pleased."

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