Back Scratches

Pint-sized Showman Billy Rose is so tickled to see his stuff in print that he pays $1,500 a week to run it as an ad in Manhattan's dailies (TIME, June 24). Only incidentally does he plug his "bespangled basement" nightclub. By last week, the fan mail and the newspaper syndicate offers he had received had not weaned Rose from his amateur standing. But they did show him that he might give his copy away instead of paying space rates.

First to get Rose's offer was Editor Ralph Ingersoll of adless, reader-hungry PM (circ. 165,000). ("They say they're against people who push people around. Well, I'm people! My name is Norman Corwin, just like anybody else. In a tizzy I called Ralph Ingersoll. 'Hello! Ralph! Baby!' I said, very formally, 'Would you be interested in running my pipsqueak paragraphs for free? I promise not to mention my Technicolor trap [nor] the 50 girls with the 49 costumes.'--O.K., elephant boy,' said Ralph.")

Rose said that he would also offer his Pitching Horseshoes free to 100 U.S. papers. He wanted no formal commitments, so he could quit when he got tired of it. But he was obviously nursing a journalistic itch. Wrote he: "The sight of your own words in type is like having your back scratched--and when you get a byline--Rita Hayworth is doing the scratching!"

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