Philadelphia: You're Another

Elected Mayor of Philadelphia last week by a thumping 64,197 majority: short, swart Bernard ("Barney") Samuel, 63, self-made South Philadelphia ward heeler who rose in the Republican machine from doorbell-ringer to mayor. Rejected: sophisticated, billiard-bald Main Liner William C. Bullitt, 52, native of genteel Rittenhouse Square, pre-Munich New Deal Ambassador to the U.S.S.R..and to France.

For the mayoralty campaign, the City of Brotherly Love put on as unfilial a show of plain-&-fancy mudslinging as U.S. politics had seen in many a day. Against Bill Bullitt stood an odd combination: the G.O.P. machine and Communists who still smarted from ex-Ambassador Bullitt's lack of tact toward the Soviet Union in 1933-36. For Barney Samuel stood many a plain Philadelphian who was just simply leary of Bill Bullitt's attitude of elegant distaste. But there was a series of below-the-belt assaults on both candidates' patriotism, ancestry and personal morals. From unidentified quarters Bullitt was pictured as 1) Jewish, 2) anti-Jewish, 3) pro-Nazi, 4) antilabor, 5) anti-Soviet. A trashy, sexy, satirical novel authored by Bullitt in 1926 was exhumed and printed serially in the Philadelphia Daily News to brand Candidate Bullitt as a man who approved of loose living. Bullitt's lifted-pinkie horror of Philadelphia slums was interpreted as a public slur on every right-thinking Philadelphian's civic pride. At the last moment, Franklin Roosevelt called the attacks on Bullitt a "mass of falsehoods." But the endorsement had no effect. Bill Bullitt was hurled back into private life; Barney Samuel got ready for four years of complaints about the nauseous drinking water, the unkempt streets, the lagging fire department, the unbuttoned police, the erratic taxes, and himself.

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