War Horse to Pasture

One July day in 1938, thumbing through a pile of story clips, City Editor Harry F. Reutlinger of Hearst's Chicago evening American turned up an item reporting that a missing U.S. flyer named Douglas Corrigan had been sighted off the Irish Coast. Reutlinger promptly put in transatlantic phone calls to all three of Ireland's major airports, kept all three lines open until Corrigan landed at Dublin and took the call. "Fly the wrong way?" prompted Reutlinger, mindful that Corrigan, before taking off from New York, had given Los Angeles as his destination. "I sure did," said the fellow who soon became famous as "Wrong Way" Corrigan. "Stick to that," advised Reutlinger. "It's the best story you can get."

It was also one of the better stories racked up by a newsman who has had plenty of good ones. Assigned in 1920 to dig up evidence that the 1919 World Series had been fixed, Reporter Reutlinger asked a Chicago White Sox fan for the name of "the dumbest player on the team." Name in hand, Reutlinger knocked on the door of Outfielder Oscar ("Happy") Felsch with the startling--and false --news: "I just want to tell you they've confessed." Replied the dumbest member of the White Sox: "Well, those wise guys. Sure, I got mine too. Five hundred bucks."

Any Identity. A newsman who believed that anyone would tell anyone anything over a telephone, Reutlinger got the first interview with Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe, who delivered the Dionne quintuplets, by calling long distance to Callandar, Ont. After the Lindbergh kidnaping, Reutlinger was the first newsman to reach Colonel Lindbergh in Hopewell, N.J.-- by long distance telephone. But he persistently denied a rumor that he once posed as President Harding -- over the phone, of course -- to gain access to some information he wanted from the White House: "I believe in honest journalism," he said rather injuredly.

Off to One Side. A middle-sized (5 ft. 6 in.), white-haired, dapper man who wears noisy ties and elevator shoes, Harry Reutlinger ran the American's city room for 15 years, watching a dozen managing editors come and go, and blandly telling them all the same thing: "If you don't want me to work for you, just let me know and I'll make other arrangements." Other arrangements were never necessary. But inevitably, time itself stranded Reutlinger in journalism's past. Raised to managing editor in 1951, he lost some of the old steam, began to show uncharacteristic flashes of temperance.

In 1956 the American, which had been losing money for Hearst for years despite a hefty circulation (some 470,000 today), sold out to the Chicago Tribune. Last week the American's proprietors an nounced that they were moving Reutlinger to one side, making him managing editor of the Sunday edition and editor of the new weekend television magazine. His successor as managing editor: Luke P. Carroll, 44, of the New York Herald Tribune. A Trib veteran of 20 years, Carroll rose from reporter to Chicago correspond ent (1944-49), to news, foreign, national and city editor in 1954.

With the stoicism of an old war horse who can still graze on memories, Harry Reutlinger, 63, moved gracefully to his new pasture. "I was part of the past," he said. "But I don't care to discuss it."

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