Scrapbookman

U. S. publishers last year brought out 10,307 new books, more than in any previous year, Publishers' Weekly announced last week. In most cases publishers are happy to count their sales in thousands of copies. One volume, however, called Tony's Scrap Book had sold 225,000 copies, was still going fairly strong last month when Publishers Reilly & Lee issued Tony's Scrap Book No. 2. These, along with another published last November with the title 'R' You Listenin'?, are the product of Anthony ("Tony") Wons, a radio performer who has broken all records of Columbia Broadcasting System for sustained fan mail (2,000 letters a week). Self-styled a "peptomist," Wons is regarded by a shuddering minority as the most offensive broadcaster on the air. To his enormous radio following, principally in rural regions, he is a comforter of rare understanding who drops in for a friendly chat. To his critics he is an intruder who slithers out of the loudspeaker, puts his arm across his listener's shoulder and assures him that "all is well."

Broadcaster Wons' books are collections of odds & ends which he recites alternate mornings in the "Tony's Scrap Book" period, and every evening on the Camel Quarter Hour between Morton Downey's ballads. The two called Tony's Scrap Books are anthologies of noble thoughts, snatches of homely humor, tributes to beauty, diligence, nature, perseverance, motherhood, home, etc. Some are from Edgar Albert Guest, Dr. Frank Crane, Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Many, of unknown origin, are favorites of listeners who send them in. Here and there are a few lines from Shelley, Browning, Whitman, A. E. Housman. Wons puts them through a microphone in a voice hushed, saponaceous, insinuatingly folksy, with an ingratiating "Are yuh listenin'?" or "Isn't that pretty?" 'R' You Listenin'? is a book of extracts from "Tony's Own Philosophy," sermonets which he sometimes broadcasts. Typical excerpt:

". . . But at night when you come Home, you are King to those kids of yours and to the little wife, and they would not trade you for any other Dad on earth."

Anthony Wons, whose last name is Polish for "whiskers," became a scrapbookman while in a hospital for two years convalescing from War wounds. He spent his time in reading inspirational essays and verse and pasting up his favorite items. Also he continued an early hobby of memorizing Shakespeare's plays. Seven years ago he persuaded Sears, Roebuck & Co.'s WLS in Chicago to let him broadcast some of the plays, taking all parts himself. The broadcasts were popular and next year he began radio readings from his scrapbooks. That was a far greater success. Listeners everywhere began sending in bits they wanted "Tony" to read, even their own scrapbooks. (He has more than 200. The one which he currently uses is 27 in. thick.) Also over WLS he conducted a period of nondenominational devotions called "The Little Brown Church in the Vale." After a short career with Cincinnati's WLW, Wons joined Columbia in Manhattan. His income, including book royalties, is estimated near $2,000 per week.

While his normal speech is less ghostly than his microphone manner. "Tony" is the "peptomist" outside the studio as well as in. He looks much younger than his 40 years, lives with his wife (childhood sweetheart) and 11-year-old daughter in a Long Island apartment, has a summer cottage in Wisconsin near his birthplace.

In Florida

A long, rakish craft skimmed the wavelets of Indian Creek, Fla. one day last week, faster than a boat had ever traveled before, but a watch-tick too slow, officially, to break the world's record. The boat was Miss America IX; her pilot, Garfield ("Gar") Wood; her time, 96.20 nautical m. p. h. Because he had failed to exceed Kaye Don's time by a full 5 m. p. h. Gar Wood could not claim a record.

By standards other than watch-ticks "Gar" Wood's race was a victory. It provided columns and columns of newspaper publicity under the dateline of Miami Beach, Fla., an accomplishment which caused double satisfaction to a short, round-faced, exceedingly affable young man named Stephen Jerome Hannagan. Hannagan is Wood's press agent, Miami Beach's press agent. Geographically, his time is divided among Miami Beach, Montauk Point, L. I. and the Indianapolis Speedway, whither he dashed last fortnight to prepare publicity for the annual automobile races to be held there in May. Professionally his prime allegiance goes to Carl Graham Fisher, promoter of all three enterprises.

Because his full name would not fit in a column of the Lafayette (Ind.) Journal when he was given his first by-line nearly 15 years ago, Stephen Jerome Hannagan became "Steve" Hannagan. Today "Steve" Hannagan is a name known in practically every important newspaper office in the U. S. and most of the better barrooms.

Hannagan began press-agentry when Billy McCarney's troupe of barnstorming automobile racers came to Lafayette. McCarney, once a Broadway impresario, was taken ill and young "Steve," who had never before seen a racing car, publicized his show. On the strength of his success he ventured to Indianapolis, worked on the Star for a time and eventually attached himself to Promoter Fisher's Speedway. Result: the "boy press agent." as Promoter Fisher called him, set a new attendance record for the races which he has been exploiting ever since. Early in the game "Steve" Hannagan established a reputation among sports writers and editors that stands him in excellent stead today. He was never known to lie or to fake a story.

Taking a Christmas holiday in Florida in 1924 Hannagan again encountered Carl Fisher who was then developing Miami Beach. Mourning the fact that the Press made no distinction between Miami and Miami Beach, three miles from the mainland, Promoter Fisher again hired Hannagan. Few days later Hannagan wired his first dispatch to United Press: MIAMI BEACH FLA -- FLASH -- JULIUS FLEISCHMANN DROPPED DEAD ON POLO FIELD HERE STOP DONT FORGET MIAMI BEACH DATELINE.

Today Hannagan's Miami Beach News Bureau includes six reporters and two photographers, functions like any newspaper staff, scrupulously covers adverse news when it occurs.

It was Hannagan who "humanized" Gene Tunney when the latter suffered acute unpopularity before his first fight with Dempsey. He counselled the late George L. ("Tex") Rickard in promoting the Sharkey-Stribling fight. He took Rickard to the hospital when he was stricken with appendicitis, substituted for him at the opening of the Miami Beach Kennel Club; was outside the door when Rickard died and escorted his body to New York. Returning to Miami Beach he continued promoting the fight, "building-up" Stribling for southern fans and Sharkey for the northerners for a $405,000 gate.

That the U. S. Scouting Fleet maneuvered off Montauk Point last summer was due as much to the adroitness of Press Agent Hannagan as it was to the Navy wire pulling of Promoter Fisher or Congressman Fred Albert Britten (TIME, Aug. 24).

With little time for writing, "Steve" Hannagan sold a dozen articles to Cosmopolitan last year on such personages as Tunney, Tommy Milton, Johnny Weissmuller, Gar Wood, Bill Tilden, Albie Booth. Last October, aged 30, he married Ruth Ellery of Manhattan. He likes to lie beneath a Panatrope phonograph and whistle in tune with it. The sound of anyone eating an apple before breakfast sends him into a rage. He wishes he could tap dance, has no use for "public relations counsels." Odds, Ends

P: Publisher Frank Ernest Gannett, who bought the venerable Brooklyn Eagle (once called the best "local" paper in the U. S.) three years ago and found it unprofitable, sold it again last week. First rumors were that the paper would be retrieved by the Herbert Foster Gunnison interests from whom Publisher Gannett bought it and who still hold substantial mortgages. Instead the purchaser was announced as a syndicate organized by Managing Editor Harris McCabe Crist (who was a former co-owner with the Gunnisons) and M. Preston Goodfellow, oldtime Eagle employe and technical "publisher"' of the paper under the Gannett regime.

P: Like more than one other magazine which has felt the pinch of hard, times Outlook & Independent last week changed from weekly to monthly for the first time since its establishment in 1869 as The Christian Union with Henry Ward Beecher as editor-in-chief. Fattened but otherwise unchanged, Outlook will bid for bigger newsstand sales.

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