Dear Mrs. Mayfield

Jack Foster, 36, ex-assistant executive editor of the New York World-Telegram, went to Denver two years ago to pump some life blood into Scripps-Howard's doddering Rocky Mountain News. With the help of Business Manager Bill Hailey, he brightened up the stodgy, old (83 years) sheet, raised its sluggish circulation to a new high (about 50,000).

Observing the 50,000 soldiers and defense workers who had moved in on Denver (pop. 322,412), he resolved to add them to his mounting circulation before the bigger, haughtier, wealthier Denver Post gathered them in. A column of advice-to-the-lovelorn--one of journalism's oldest tried-&-true reader snatchers--might do the trick. In mysterious Mrs. Molly Mayfield he found an almost perfect editor. Nobody knew who "she" was and Editor Foster wouldn't tell.

Molly hit the jackpot the first month she went lovelorning. A needling letter from an "Annoyed Cadet" at the U.S. Army Air Forces' nearby Lowry Field complained that Denver girls failed to draw the proper line between the socially eligible cadets and ordinary foot soldiers. The News got more than 200 letters within 24 hours from Lowry's personnel. Everybody read Molly Mayfield.

This happy incident gave Molly her line: to nurse along a series of verbal wars. It worked so well that the column soon became the most successful feature Denver had had since the days of Eugene Field, back in the '80s.

Molly's lovelorning raised demands from readers that Editor Foster give a straight answer to a question they had long been asking: Who is Molly Mayfield?

Editor Jack Foster and wife Frances solemnly deny that they are Mrs. Molly Mayfield. But nobody in Denver believes them, any more.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.