Daughter v. Father

Alicia Patterson Simpson Brooks Guggenheim, thrice-married favorite daughter of Captain Joe Patterson, last week all but called her father a liar. In her year-old tabloid, the Hempstead (L.I.) Newsday, pretty, 34-year-old Alicia wrote an editorial, THAT 80 PER CENT, about isolationist claims that "80% of the American people are against our going into the war." It began: "You remember the old gag: 'Figures don't lie--but liars sometimes figure.' " The 80% claim has been pushed particularly by the Chicago Tribune, published by her cousin Colonel Robert McCormick, and the New York Daily News, published by her father.

All this was just a sign that Daughter Alicia is a member in good standing of the Patterson-McCormick family, a clan of determined individualists. From her paper it has long been plain that she is no isolationist, but as she says: "Father and I are still very great friends." They do not attempt to reconcile their editorial difference. ("We just don't talk about it.") Meantime she goes on reviewing books for her father's Sunday News. ("It gives me a chance to get a lot of reading done that I wouldn't do otherwise.")

In her office hang the originals of two creepy Daily News cartoons depicting "Uncle Sap" being seduced by the skeleton-headed harlot "World War II," gifts of her good friend Daily News Cartoonist C. D. Batchelor. Her managing editor, 39-year-old Harold A. Davis, came from the Daily News, as did several Newsday reporters. In the last elections she borrowed the Daily News idea of a "Battle Page."* Her biggest help came from the Daily News's late great promotion wizard, Max Annenberg. Max coached her on all the tricks of the trade, got her a general manager, William Mapel, ex-managing editor of the Wilmington (Del.) Morning News and Journal-Every Evening, regretted he could not also give her Daily News features because their territory overlapped.

"The News has been so good to us," says Publisher Alicia. Meantime well-edited Newsday, claiming only 2,000 less circulation than its 20-year-old Republican competitor, the Nassau Review-Star (circ. 32,000), has won the Ayer typography award, hopes soon to turn a profit.

* Calling it "The Squared Circle," in three issues she filled the right-hand side with pro-Roosevelt editorials. The left-hand side was filled with pro-Willkie editorials by her husband of two years, Harry Frank Guggenheim, 51-year-old copper tycoon, ex-Ambassador to Cuba, aviation patron. ("My husband is traditionally a Republican. I'm not traditionally anything.")

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