Airborne Stowaway

Every now & then the logic of it all was overpowering. Suppose he did have to settle for a small part in a western movie at first? Wouldn't they spot Artie Biggs for a surefire Roy Rogers when they saw his lightning draw and heard him sing the way he sang at Manhattan's St. Vincent Ferrer's school? Why should a kid with his talents stew through fourth grade, take Skippy and Lady out for their walks every night and waste away his life in a 66th Street flat--when Hollywood was right there, waiting?

Three times--by foot, subway and train --Artie Biggs, a freckle-faced eleven-year-old, had started out for Hollywood, only to be turned back. Once he got as far as Brewster, N.Y., 52 miles from home in the wrong direction, before the cops caught him. One morning last week the call came again, loud and clear. Artie dialed the Trans World Airline counter at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, told them he was going to Hollywood to make a picture and wanted a reservation. Yes, he said, the afternoon Constellation that stopped at Pittsburgh and St. Louis would be all right. He'd pick up the airport limousine at the hotel.

A few hours later, dressed in his best suit and a white sailor cap, Artie walked into the Waldorf and explained that his mother was waiting at La Guardia Field with his ticket. He fumbled when the airport bus driver asked for the $1.25 fare until a kindly passenger coughed up. There was no problem at the field: he just walked up the gangway with everybody else, settled down in a seat beside the window, soon, high over eastern Pennsylvania, he was chatting with the stewardess and sipping chicken broth.

A T.W.A. agent was waiting when the Connie landed at Pittsburgh. Somehow, there were 42 tickets and 43 passengers on the plane, he said. When they came to Artie, he told them that he had left his ticket on the reservation desk at the Waldorf back in New York. T.W.A. could pick it up there.

By the time Artie's plane had landed at St. Louis, the airline knew the awful truth: Artie Biggs had cracked the system which had cleared 9,000,000 transcontinental passengers without a stowaway. He was hauled off to a children's shelter, got 50-c- from a St. Louis cop en route, and shipped home the following day to his widowed mother, who was not amused. "You know," Artie told reporters who met him at La Guardia, "I'll probably get spanked for this."

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