Riches for a Rookie

As a vaudeville performer, Jackie Robinson thought, he would make a good first baseman. Explained Jackie: "I can't sing or dance." But at Harlem's Apollo Theater and Washington's Howard, Robbie picked up more money in two weeks than the $5,000 Branch Rickey paid him for seven months with the pennant-winning Brooklyn Dodgers (TIME, Sept. 22). Last week his show played Chicago's Regal Theater. It wasn't much of an act. He was onstage only eight minutes, and he neither sang nor danced--just answered, in a modest manner and a clear voice, questions about his career.

Out of his $7,500 take at the Regal, Jackie had to pay for the rest of his company, including a twelve-piece jazz band, a puppet act, and a comic who ate cigarettes. But he still had a lot left for himself.

Then, after accepting the baseball writers' Comiskey Trophy for the Rookie of the Year, Jackie climbed into the new Cadillac that Dodger fans had given him at Ebbets Field, and headed for Hollywood. He will star in a movie tentatively called Brooklyn, U.S.A. and help Negro Sportwriter Wendell Smith finish Robinson's "autobiography."

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