Cuddle Appeal

Last week not one censorious peep came from the nation's reformers when from Bernarr Macfadden's publishing house issued a magazine containing twelve photographic portraits in the nude. The subjects were cute, provocative, but not in the usual Macfadden mode. They were all infants. Announced two months ago (TIME, July 25), Mr. Macfadden's new monthly magazine Babies Just Babies was out, edited by Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt assisted by her daughter Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Dall.

Mother of five, grandmother of three, Editrix Roosevelt editorially led off thus: "With this issue we make our bow to the public. Babies! Can you think of anything more wonderful?" She told a tale on Assistant Editrix Dall: "I will always remember when my first-born wept bitterly all of one evening just as some guests were assembling for dinner. I stood it as long as I could, then I went to the telephone and asked a specialist wrhat might be the matter with the baby. He suggested that I turn her over my knee with her little feet to the fire and pat her back. ... In time, the disturbing ailment in her 'tummy' removed itself and I had a most peaceful infant who finally fell asleep and was put back in her crib, and I rejoined my guests one and one-half hours after their arrival. . . ."

Well printed and made up, Babies was aimed with care and force at all persons who "ooh" and "ah" over small children. The pictures were well chosen for cuddle and dandle appeal. There were unknown babies (but no pickaninnies), royal babies (Baroness de Bardossy of Hungary), socialite babies (Peter & Palmer Dixon of Southampton, L. I.), champion babies (Gillingham F. Landis, onetime winner of the Ocean City, N. J. baby parade). There was no mention of deceased baby-of-the- year Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. or unborn baby-of-next-year Smith Holman Reynolds. Promised for the next issue-was the "inside story" of "the most famous baby in the world. She was famous even before she was born. Her existence disturbed a number of highly important people, and there were legal battles about her. Now she is going contentedly and quietly about the business of growing into a little girl, and today you probably couldn't even name her." Guessers guessed Helen Hayes MacArthur's "Act of God" infant over whom there was an Actors Equity row (TIME, Oct. 7, 1929).

Just Babies approached its subject from many an angle. The domestic economy angle appeared in "A Layette for $11.10? Here's How" and "The Budget Nursery." A child specialist outlined 24 ideal hours in a baby's life and Assistant Editrix Dal! replied across the page with a report of how difficult she found carrying out the specialist's routine. There were five articles by laymen and physicians on obstetrics and pediatrics. A typical Macfaddle was to be found in a True Story entitled "I Became A Mother at 42--The simple story of a, woman who experienced the great adventure after she thought hope was gone." The two fiction pieces contained in Just Babies chiefly concerned parents.

Theatrical Producer Crosby Gaige told how he is rearing his adopted son Jeremy ("Rearing children today is about the simplest thing in the world if you know your onions"). In addition, Just Babies reprinted a famed lullaby ("All Through The Night"), celebrated child poems ("Baby" and "The Little Gentleman"), baby book reviews, and an account of the writing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in baby talk.

Advertisers included: Borden. Mennen. Kellogg's castor oil, Karo, Dennison's paper diapers, Baby Bite teething ring, Johnson & Johnson, Shur-Loc window guard, Little Toidey toilet seat. Price of Babies is 15-c-. Print order for the first edition: 100,000.

Every line in Babies Just Babies was advertised as read by Editrix Roosevelt before it went into the magazine. And the Macfadden organization, while it provided her with a male assistant to take care of mechanical details, confessed it was surprised at the amount of time Assistant Editrix Dall put in at the office.

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