Margin for Error

Look has turned an old editing practice into a bright new publishing technique. Its innovation: the subjects of personality sketches are now invited to edit the interviewer's copy, their corrections, protests or gags are printed as marginal notes alongside the story.

Radio's Fred Allen is the subject in the current issue. When Author Maurice Zolotow writes: "The bags under his eyes come to look like fugitives from a hammock factory," the sentence is pencil-ringed and Funnyman Allen retorts in the margin: "Come now. My bags aren't that big. My eyes just look as though they are peeping over two dirty ping-pong balls." When Zolotow reports: "Allen got his first break when he played the lead in Polly, a 1928 musical," Allen corrects him testily: "In 1921 I toured with Nora Bayes and Lew Fields. In 1922 I played in The Passing Show at the Winter Garden. In 1924 I was in The Greenwich Follies. Where were you during these years, Mr. Zolotow?"

The idea of giving biographees a chance to defend themselves publicly came to Look's Editor Harlan Logan when he bought a manuscript from Reporter-Author Leland Stowe titled Roy Howard, Newspaper Napoleon. Logan sent it to Scripps-Howard's Howard for checking, got it back with marginal notes that disagreed with Stowe on several points. One Howard comment: "Napoleon, huh? Nap was a little runt and I'm nearly 5 feet 7 inches! He had a cowlick and I still have a pompadour."

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