Walker's Warning

It is common knowledge in Washington that many a rich Jew, especially in the cinema industry, yearns for political connections and preferment. To Mayor Walker of New York City it was "surprising," however, when he learned that Joseph M. Schenck, husband of Cinemactress Norma Talmadge and president of United Artists Corp. was a delegate to the Republican National Convention, a Hooverite (TIME, June 11.) Vice President Louis B. Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. was there too.

Mayor Walker, touring the West in the interests of the Brown Derby, visited Hollywood last week. Abruptly, unexpectedly, he took the Messrs. Schenck and Mayer, though not by name, as the text for a sermon to the cinema industry. He warned it to be nonpartisan. He reminded it that public officials such as himself had power over Sunday theatre laws, for example. He said he hoped that cinemen "are not so enslaved that they can be handed over" by two or three leaders in the industry. He warned that should the industry "dabble in politics" and choose the losing side it would be "crushed."

The cinema industry was astonished. Producers marveled that so spry a product of the peepul as James John Walker should have failed to appreciate how dangerous it would be for cinemakers to provoke the prejudices of their gum-chewing public, by showing political bias on the screen. They marveled that so shrewd a person as Mayor Walker should have underestimated the shrewdness of the cinemen. The Messrs. Schenck and Mayer called Mayor Walker's warnings "extremely amusing." Cinema Tsar Will H. Hays ignored the incident.