Pathetique

A tingling Celtic sense of the dramatic has New York's Mayor James John Walker. One midnight last week, he made the unprecedented announcement that he would act as a special catastrophe investigator.

Cause of this magisterial to do had come two days before when at Pathe Co.'s Manhattan film studio a surge of flame swashed across the wooden roof, turned the barnlike building into a man broiler. Within a half-hour ten crushed, charred bodies, including four pretty girls, were laid out on the street below a blackened sign: PATHE TALKING COMEDIES MAKE THE WHOLE WORLD LAUGH.

The fire department had ordered installation of automatic sprinklers in the studio which Pathe officials resisted on the claim that no more than five inflammable film reels (the legal limit) were stored there. In the fire ruins Police Commissioner Whalen dramatically counted out 150 blistered cans of film reels.

Mayor Walker spoke darkly of bribery of fire inspectors.

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