Commentator

In the list of pocket-sized monthly magazines on the U. S. newsstand, a newcomer was added this week in the shape of Commentator, with Radio's Commentator Lowell Thomas billed as editor-in-chief. Backer-in-chief was Charles Shipman Payson, the tall, rusty-haired Manhattan lawyer whom Jock Whitney's sister Joan married. His ambition to be a publisher appears to have been fired by the thought that the commentators of radio probably had facts & opinions to give the world which radio's timorous self-censorship bottles up before the microphone.

Mr. Payson's 25-c- magazine had on its editorial board, besides Editor Thomas. Commentators John B. Kennedy and Hans V. Kaltenborn.

The printed remarks of Commentator's commentators were neither new nor original, contained no editorial dynamite. Lowell Thomas dug up old yarns of German inflation. John B. Kennedy contributed an argument against the winning of the heavyweight championship by Negro Joe Louis Barrow on the ground that it would irritate Negrophobes. Mr. Kaltenborn, most literate of the commentators, offered an old interview with Spain's late Philosopher Miguel de Unamuno. Hearst's Edwin C. Hill wrote on political bosses, concluded that hypocrisy was a bad thing. Floyd Gibbons gave an unexciting account of his attempts to broadcast from Madrid. Russian-born, English-bred Boake Carter filled six pages on former King Edward VIII, closed with the information that Edward was now Duke of Windsor.

In spite of the dull showing of these radio ''names,'' purchasers of Commentator felt that they were getting a sharply flavored magazine which aspired to fill the place of the American Mercury in its palmy days. Lead-off article, from no loudspeaker but from the pen of Historian James Truslow Adams, was a thoughtful audit of the "state of the Union." George E. Sokolsky, writing on John L. Lewis, made the flat assertion that the United Mine Workers of America could "come into a town and take possession of it," and "close down any steel or automobile plant in the country." Humorist Robert Benchley was represented with a wry piece on international conferences, the New York World-Telegram's Radio Editor Alton Cook sarcastically "exposed" Major Bowes and his Amateur Hour. Fred Cooper, star draughtsman of the late Life, did one of his oldtime two-page spreads on "Winter."

Most arresting feature of Commentator was its editorial comment, which ranged from nominating Franklin Roosevelt (whose portrait was on the cover) as Man of the Month, to open letters to Father Coughlin and Actress Mae West, urging the one to stay off the air, the other to retire from the cinema. Two full-page editorials on the U. S. National debt and the fate of Europe gave notice that, for the sounding-board of Publisher Payson & Associates, no subject may be considered too profound.

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