Springboard & Fancy
Sirs:
It's no guarantee of an honest cinema for scenario writers to draw their inspiration from something personally or socially true. But it often helps. For the picture, tentatively called The Baby Market and starring Barbara Stanwyck, we were ignited originally by a story in TIME (May 20). What resulted is wholly fictional, but we feel it only decent to credit you with the factual floor-work, the springboard into fancy.
And we believe it's an enormous dividend on a $5 investment. Again thanks for your vivid reportage.
JOHN BRIGHT
ROBERT TASKER
Paramount Productions, Inc. Hollywood, Calif.
In its May 20 issue TIME told the story of The Cradle, Evanston, Ill. baby home from which many a bigwig has adopted children.--ED.
Thing of Beauty
Sirs:
. . . The only reaction I had from the cover on TIME, Aug. 19, was that it was a thing of beauty.
I believe the majority of your readers were not insulted by the picture of Jean Harlow.
Give us more beauty.
L. S. EHRMAN
Louisville, Ky.
Sirs:
I am surprised TIME'S sensitive readers did not threaten to withdraw their subscriptions when they were startled by gazing at shapely Jean Harlow. TIME'S rejoinder was proper. . . .
LEWIS HELTERMAN Brooklyn, N. Y.
Sirs:
I have just read Verna's and Richard's and Robert's letters in your Sept. 2 issue taking you to task for putting Jean Harlow in your front window. Persons with such silly ideas shouldn't indulge themselves in writing. Poor souls! Why "take on" so!
E. E. RICH
Lawrenceville, N. J.
Sirs:
. . . Jean Harlow's picture on TIME was pretty swell.
L. A. MOORE JR.
E. Liverpool, Ohio
Lively Dothan
Sirs:
. . . Dothan not being even a village when President Roosevelt was born and now having a population of more than 16,000 certainly could not be a "drowsy town" [TIME, Sept. 2]. At any rate, any traveling salesman will tell you that New York, Atlanta and Dothan are the three best towns he knows.
I am not the secretary of the local Chamber of Commerce, nor even a member of the Rotary Club, merely the local bankster. Since this particular bank easily survived the Depression, my statement as to Dothan's being a lively town is most apt to be very conservative, and I hope you will correct the statement that Dothan is an old and sleepy Southern town, as delightful as such places are.
W. D. MALONE
Vice President and Cashier The First National Bank of Dothan Dothan, Ala.
Sirs:
The Dothan Eagle of which Julian Hall is editor is the pride & joy of all newsmen who know it. It is one of the few papers in the U. S. which cannot be influenced by its advertisers. Let Blumberg & Sons or Montgomery Ward, its leading advertisers, paint their store fronts and they will be told politely to include the information in their advertising. Let someone attempt to purchase the influence or prestige of the paper and he will forcibly be removed from the office.
Not so long ago Dothan experienced a hot campaign to decide whether to sell the town's power system to the Alabama Power Co. The Eagle took the side of the private ownership advocates and won. After the fight a man interested in the private ownership of the plant left a substantial sum of money at the Eagle office. When Julian Hall found the money in the office safe he wept with rage, sent the money back.
Hot-tempered, stubborn, pugnacious Editor Hall is such a stickler for fairness in his papa's news columns that beside it even the august New York Times appears purple with prejudice.
Noteworthy is the fact that the Eagle's new plant and equipment are completely paid for and that its staff, headed by able Managing Editor Dorian Stout, is generously paid in comparison with the larger State papers, that its circulation has increased 50% in a year.
CHARLES ALLDREDGE
Oklahoma City, Okla.
Buddha's Sit
Sirs:
TIME, Sept. 2, errs in saying "Buddha . . . sat six years under a Bo tree."
Vol. I, The Great Events by Famous Historians--"For six years he gave himself up to the severest penance until he was wasted away to a shadow by fasting and self mortification." Finally Siddhartha saw the futility of physical discipline to attain mental ends, and coming to a large tree sat down in its shade to eat.
He remained there all day pondering upon what next to do, and at the end of the day he had become "Buddha" the enlightened one, having grasped the four noble Truths: "Life is sorrow." "Desire is the cause of sorrow." "The extinction of desire is the ending of sorrow." "There is an eight fold way to happiness, or right living."
RICHARD WEISFIELD
Seattle, Wash.
Buddha's Bone Sirs:
. . . Regarding the tiny bone, reputedly that of the Buddha, brought to San Francisco by Japanese Bishop Kenju Masuyama, one should be reminded, perhaps, that when the Buddha died . . . his ashes were divided among eight towns and buried in separate dagabas, or tombs. Seven of these were opened by the Indian Emperor Asoka . . . in 264 B.C., and the ashes distributed in 84,000 urns among the peoples, nations and cities he had proselytized.
The Borobudur, in mid-Java, erected between 760 and 850 A.D. . . . is the most notable memorial to the Buddha's ashes extant. Contrary to popular conception, the Borobudur (meaning "Many Buddhas," because of 432 images of the Buddha enshrined in niches and latticed dagabas among its upper galleries and terraces) is not a temple, but a reliquary for just such a trivial bone as that San Francisco remnant.
DEANE H. DICKASON
Producer of "Port o' Call," Travelogs
New York City
This England!
Sirs:
As a worthy TIME reader, I am deprived for the first time of reading you from cover to cover. Oh, this England! Or is it you?
RICHARD S. MINER London
It is the British distributors of TIME who, before putting the issue of Aug. 19 on newsstand sale, removed p. 21 on which was described the Balkan holiday of the Duke and Duchess of Kent at a time when the Premier of Greece was supposedly scouting for a new king for his country. --ED.
Sirs:
Your blasphemous article about members of our Royal Family [TIME, Aug. 19] has met with little success in this country.
Be assured that they little merit such vile treatment from a foreign journal that takes British subscriptions.
As one who comes in contact with royalty as a tradesman, all I can say is that your remarks would not be so blatant if these people could come into the open and hit you back. . . .
CYRIL G. KENT
Kent and Francis, Expert Furriers London
Sirs:
What's this you've been publishing about the Book of York that our distributors have been fools enough to censor and tear out over here. Please post me (letterpost) the censored article and send me a bill for a year's subscription to TIME. I don't know TIME; I ought to do so. FORTUNE I know and The March of Time films and I have an instinctive admiration for your group.
H. G. WELLS London
To Novelist Wells has gone forward by letterpost the "censored article" on the "Book of Kent" (not York), together with a bill for a year's subscription to TIME. --ED.
Open Virginia
Sirs:
REFERRING YOUR STATEMENT SEPT 9, YOU HAVE BEEN MISINFORMED REGARDING RECOMMENDATION TO UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. FOLLOWING ADVICE OF U. S. PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE, VIRGINIA STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, ALBEMARLE COUNTY AND CHARLOTTESVILLE HEALTH DEPARTMENT, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA WILL OPEN SEPT. 19. . . .
H. S. CUMMING
Surgeon General U. S. Public Health Service Washington, D. C.
Sirs:
. . . THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA HAS NOT BEEN ADVISED BY THE U. S. PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE TO REMAIN CLOSED THIS AUTUMN AND THE UNIVERSITY WILL OPEN ON SEPT 19 UPON THE ADVICE OF NATIONAL, STATE AND LOCAL HEALTH AUTHORITIES.
J. L. NEWCOMB
President
University of Virginia Charlottesville, Va.
The Public Health Service asked University of Virginia to defer its opening from Sept. 12 to Sept. 16. University authorities agreed, elected to make the postponement a full week. TIME regrets any injustice to the University caused by a misunderstanding between reporters and the Public Health Service spokesman. --ED.
Sky Pilot Baloney
Sirs:
Congratulations to Junior Deck Officer F. G. Tinker (TIME, Sept. 2) for exposing the percentage of piety in the Navy at sea. The same situation is found in the hooey about the Bible being a best-seller and the same is true of the piety in the Civilian Conservation Corps.
In the camps we are practically forced into chapel attendance at times by the deceit practiced by barracks leaders and officers alike. Realizing that the armed service exists primarily for murder and that a Christian philosophy of the type advocated by the radical character of Christ (historical or mythical) is at variance with the doctrines of the Fascist Friedrich Nietzsche, who presides over the spiritual life of the Army and Navy, it becomes necessary for the officers to practice subtle deceit in order to get the enrollees into the Hall to listen to the dry and inane piffle of the sky pilots, who merely become apologists for the existing war machine and cannot under any circumstance represent the Christianity of the "pale Socialist of Galilee." We, the poor, deluded and unwanted enrollees, are often led unsuspectingly into chapel by the unrevealing report that "The Captain wants to see everyone in the Recreation Hall." Depending on our courage and state of mind we run either for the woods or the Hall, to discover that no matter how thin you slice it, it is still sky pilot baloney. . . .
JIM MACKENZIE
Luray, Va.
Sirs:
In defense of statement made by Chaplain Edward A. Duff, U. S. Navy (TIME, July 22), regarding attendance of Navy personnel at church services aboard ship and on shore, to which Junior Deck Officer Tinker, S.S. Christy-Payne, took issue, I desire to submit statistics from annual reports to the Secretary of the Navy by Navy chaplains in 1934--neither chaplain being attached to stations where attendance was "enforced."
1) "Forty-six church services have been conducted during the past year with a total attendance of 6,088. Three quarterly communion services have been held with a total of 250 communicants."
2) "Sixty-two divine services have been conducted during the past year with a total attendance of 9,105. One hundred and twenty-one holy communion services have been held with 816 men making their communion."
Attendance aboard Naval vessels is not compulsory, as ex-Midshipman and ex-Naval Officer Tinker would lead civilians to believe. Each Sunday morning, in the most commodious compartment, our ship's church is rigged. There are no stained glass windows--only plain port holes; no comfortable pews--just plain mess benches; no vested choir--but an excellent ship's orchestra and, when in port, volunteer musicians from ashore.
At these Sunday morning services it is not uncommon for several hundred officers and enlisted personnel to assemble in Christian fellowship, their attendance voluntary in every respect. . . . CHAS. G. VAN DORN
Yeoman, 2nd Class, U. S. N. Puget Sound Navy Yard Bremerton, Wash.
"Mr. Mex" of Tex.
Sirs:
In your issue of Sept. 2, under National Affairs, the Congress, you speak of the Hon. J. P. Buchanan of Brenham, Tex. and use the nickname "Buck."
Mr. Buchanan may be called "Buck" in Washington, D. C. but in Washington County, Tex., where he was reared, he is called "Mex" from the fact that as a young man he frequently went to Mexico for cattle and, I believe, lived there for a short time. People around Brenham refer to him as "Mr. Mex."
It might be of interest to you to know that Mr. Buchanan has a brother who is an honest-to-goodness cotton farmer, having a large plantation on the Brazos River about 20 miles from Brenham. "Mr. Willie" Buchanan, a bachelor of some 70 years, lives on his plantation and still directs it actively.
H. R. MATTHEWS
Captain, 23rd Infantry Fort Sam Houston, Tex.
He-man's Sport
Sirs:
As a 210-pounder who finds real exercise and vigorous perspiration in ping-pong I resent TIME'S implication (p. 24, Sept. 2) that the game of table tennis is not a he-man's business. True, there are some of the build of "Bitsy" Grant who play the game, and well, but it is my personal observation that an average and upward physique as well as a quick eye and hand is necessary to excel in a sport more lightning-like than most activity. . . .
About my own outdoor table, used almost entirely at night, a 200-watt blue lamp attracts neither insects nor runts.
HOLT MCPHERSON
Editor
High Point Enterprise High Point, N. C.
Bail Jumper
Sirs:
In TIME, Sept. 2, you have a picture of Ambassador Bullitt with some Russian friends. One of these friends you label as Comrade George Andreychine, former U. S. Communist jailbird at Leavenworth. I want to correct you. George Andreychine was sentenced from Chicago in 1918 by Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as one of the 101 members of the I. W. W. convicted in that largest of the War trials. However, he did not long remain in Leavenworth. Together with Bill Haywood and several others he was released on bail. While out on bail and awaiting an appeal, most of these, including Andreychine, fled to Russia. The Headquarters of the I. W. W. was forced to pay the defaulted bail money amounting in all to over $50,000. . . . This heavy outlay of bail monies together with the War persecutions has done much to cripple the I. W. W.
JAMES DEWITT
I. W. W. Organizer Buffalo, N. Y.
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