"Merry-Go-Round" Moves

In an increasingly popular and profitable profession, suave, gossipy Columnist Andrew Russell (Drew) Pearson ("Washington Merry-Go-Round"), who is as adept at a smear as he is at a newsbeat, has earned some unique honors. He has been:

P: Called a liar by President Roosevelt.

P: Libel-sued for $1,750,000 by General Douglas MacArthur.*

P: Dropped by the snooty Washington Social List for getting into "too many controversies."

P: Selected by the Saturday Review of Literature poll as the most influential Washington columnist.

Last week influential, controversial Drew Pearson announced that on Dec. 12 he would write his last column for Roy Howard's United Feature Syndicate. On Dec. 13 (his 47th birthday), Pearson planned to go to work for independent Bell Syndicate, whose stable of writers includes Emily Post, Dorothy Dix, John Kieran. Happy as a grig over the shift, Pearson said that Bell is giving him a flat guarantee of $20,000 a year more than he now earns. (In his twelve years with United Feature, Pearson-- and his former partner, Bob Allen, now a colonel in the Army Intelligence on General Patton's staff -- received only a percentage of the take from the columns' sales.) "But what makes me happiest," he added, "is that the column will now be distributed by wire instead of mail mimeograph. Before, my column had to be written five days ahead. Now it will be about a day and a half." Most of his 600 subscribing newspapers, he thinks, will continue to carry the column, even though Bell will charge dome of them slightly higher rates.

* In 1934, over a Pearson column portraying MacArthur as a swaggering strutter. The suit was eventually settled out of court.

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