Juggernaut in Kid Gloves
Syndicated Columnist Inez Robb has been content to leave such lofty matters as "world peace, the Good Neighbor policy, nuclear supremacy and the stabilization of the dollar" to colleagues of a more cosmic stripe. Mrs. Robb usually sights in on humbler game: highway billboards, women in slacks, unhygienic rest rooms.
Of late, she has turned her feminine fire on extremists of the far ideological right. Last week Columnist Robb discovered to her surprise that her most recent crusade contained a built-in booby trap. For daring to impugn the rectitude of the right in a luncheon speech, Columnist Robb was tossed out of her room at the Camelback Inn near Phoenix, Ariz.--typewriter, white gloves, husband and all.
The eviction was not without its comic aspects. After checking into the Camelback, a palmy desert spa usually inhabited by wealthy oldsters, Columnist Robb was somewhat amused to find her room fitted out not with the usual Gideon Bible but with a collection of anti-Communist pamphlets.
"I had read the good old Gideon Bible for 30 years." says Mrs. Robb. "But there was no Bible. Only the Gospel by Dr. Fred Schwarz. On balance. I think the King James version is to be preferred."
Inspired by this discovery, and by the hotel library's "freedom shelf." full of even more vehement anti-Communist literature. Mrs. Robb switched the text of her speech next day before the Arizona Association of Deans of Women in the Camelback's Peace Pipe Room. There she let feminine wrath get the better of her good sense, described "those on the far right" as "fascists who don't want to pay taxes." After her talk she found herself involved in an emotion-charged argument with the family of the Camelback's vehemently anti-Communist Proprietor Jack Stewart. Convinced that Mrs. Robb had not only impugned his politics, but criticized his hotel's food and service as well (she described the luncheon peas as "gutta-percha"). Stewart gave the Robbs five minutes to get out of the Camelback.
Slightly Bemused. Innkeeper Stewart's anger was a backhanded compliment to the power of a woman who. in an overcrowded journalistic specialty, has managed to find a place and a style her own. Quite by coincidence, Inez herself produced another reminder of her style last week with publication of Don't Just Stand There! (David McKay Co.; $4.95). A collection of her columns, the book suggests that Columnist Robb not only wears well, but brings to her specialty an admirable energy and skill. Columnist Robb's Irish blue eyes see life, both high and low. with the undazzled and slightly bemused vision that makes her column appetizing fare to readers of 132 dailies.
Whether stoking her pet peeve ("Women in slacks look like the back end of hacks"), assaulting high fashion ("Their models look as if they had just been blown out of a wind tunnel"), hitting back at the birds ("There ought to be a law that makes pigeon feeding a crime"), or taking a good-natured swipe at the opposite gender ("Man is indeed the weaker sex, worse luck"), Inez Robb interprets the world she roams with an inexhaustible vivacity that can make her competitors' columns read like the telephone book.
At her best, Columnist Robb whips up aphorisms with tart economy: "Doubtless, there is a Phi Beta Kappa mating call" . . . "War reunions are hell" . . . "Men are the sensitive, emotional sex, verging on hysteria." Even off form, as when she is straining for a simile ("The world is shrinking like a pair of red flannels in a spring rain"), she still manages to convey a chatty warmth that is as merchandisable in Boise as it is in Manhattan.
Whirling Dervish. Boise, in fact, is still in Inez Robb's blood--and her column intermittently pays loving homage to the "Paris of the West." As a high school student, she broke into newspapering there. From Boise, it was only a step (a degree at the University of Missouri School of Journalism) and a hop (one year on the Tulsa World] to New York. Installed on the Daily News editorial staff in 1927 at $75 a week ("My mother and father were worried sick: no good woman in Idaho had ever earned as much as $75 a month"), Inez rose to society editor within 18 months, met and married Manhattan Adman Robb ("He was just my idea of a city slicker").
But even the nation's largest daily was not big enough for Inez. After 14 years, she turned syndicated columnist and began a professional career that she has since described as "the life of a whirling dervish." She arrived in Ireland in 1942 with the first contingent of U.S. troops; later, as an accredited war correspondent, she covered the campaign in Africa. When the United Nations was born in San Francisco in 1945, Inez was there. That same year she flew around the world in six days, got back in plenty of time to cover the 1946 Texas City disaster--so close-in that an exploding ship blew her nylons off.
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