Coming Up

Cub reporters on Chicago's grimy police beat are not likely to be treated with courtesy. But this one was. Last week at the East Chicago Avenue station, the police lieutenant on duty deferentially showed him the lockup, the blotter, wished him the best of luck. At the County Building, Coroner A. L. Brodie bustled about, personally paced the newcomer through the office routine. Young (30), Harvard-accented Marshall Field IV took everything in with urbane interest. He was entering Phase 2 of his journalistic education.

Ads & Gags. Phase 1 was a six-month whirl through the circulation and advertising departments of his father's Sun. Husky, willing Field IV started on a delivery truck, learned about street sales, home sales, customer complaints against carrier boys, sat around drinking with the drivers after work. Using another name (in Chicago, salesmen are not named Marshall Field except as a gag), he sold classified ads over the telephone. Then he took a fast fling at promotion copy and a quick look at the local, national and amusement advertising departments.

Field IV's name and his born-to-the-manor air have not yet handicapped him in a business where stuffed shirts are liable to get taken to the cleaners. Last week he was getting along fine with North Side bookies, gracefully dropped $40 in a poker game with cops and reporters. Says balding Bill Block, Sun police reporter and Field's current mentor: "Everybody likes him and they all think he's a lot more democratic than they thought he'd be."

Pride & Progress. After two weeks on police, Field will take in other routine beats: City Hall, criminal courts, school, labor, etc. After that, he will hit the high spots in each of the Sun's editorial departments, winding up in London to give foreign reporting a once-over under Sun veteran Frederick Kuh. "Then," says Marshall Field III, "he'll settle down to some one job, but I don't know yet what it'll be. I'm very proud of him, but I suppose that's natural."

Field III has reason to be proud. Handsome, unpretentious Field IV graduated from Harvard magna cum laude; at the University of Virginia Law School he was editor of the Law Review and president of his class. He enlisted in the Navy the day after Pearl Harbor, took part in twelve major engagements, came back with the Purple Heart, the Silver Star and a Presidential Citation.

He has no use for papers which, like his father's Manhattan partisan PM, are adless or "subsidized by one person." His own aim as a Sun man is modest enough. Says he: "Maybe some day I'll be able to do some good here."

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