Heirs Apparent

Radio's coast-to-coast bank-night program, as most U. S. tuners now know well, is Tums' four-month-old Pot o' Gold, which every Tuesday night rings up some U. S. telephone subscriber to offer him $1,000, with no strings or Turns attached.

Movie theatres and chains now offer prizes equal to Pot o' Gold's to coax patrons away from the magic call and into theatres. Information Please, opposite Pot o' Gold, in self-defense instituted a giveaway on its own high intellectual plane--sets of Encyclopaedia Britannica. On CBS, Competitor Walter O'Keefe, with nothing to give listeners but wit, dwindled off the air middle of last month.

To fill the Walter O'Keefe half-hour, and give battle to Pot o' Gold as well, CBS on Dec. 19 raked up a radio program called Court of Missing Heirs, which had a brisk radio career two years ago in the Midwest, tracing heirs to unclaimed fortunes. Pecking away at a guesstimated pile of $160,000,000 in unclaimed estates in the U. S., Court of Missing Heirs so far this season has told the world about $350,000 awaiting long-lost brothers, errant sons, all manner of scattered kith & siblings.

Court of Missing Heirs turned up two long-lost heirs apparent, one with a limp, the other with an alias, each with a newsworthy story.

.Carl Henry Proehl, a rangy Minneapolis youth, wanted to be a prize fighter, but his father objected. So Carl changed his name to David Barry, fought his share of bouts, in 1925 left town and never saw his folks again. His father died in 1932, his mother in 1935, leaving him some $40,000. In Long Beach, Calif., meanwhile, David Barry had married a nice girl, fathered two sons, done well with a coffee shop until in 1935 he sold out. His wife got a divorce, but before she did, Barry told her his real name, and she told a Mrs. Pearl Riggert.

Last month Mrs. Riggert heard the Court of Missing Heirs broadcast Carl Henry Proehl's story. Last week Carl Henry Proehl, alias David Barry, now 40, spare & repentant, was on his way to collect his money, promising to use it to assure college educations for his sons, David, 9, Douglas, 4.

>Jim Jordan, of Culloden, Ga., went to British Columbia years ago and made a pile in gold. He died last year, left his fortune to his three brothers, Bob, Dan and Gee, an infantile paralysis cripple. Gee's share was $13,000. But he had left home years before, after a quarrel. Last Bob & Dan heard of him, he was peddling shoelaces and razor blades around Pittsburgh. Last week Court of Missing Heirs broadcast Gee Jordan's case. In Pittsburgh, a 63-year-old "newsboy" friend of 52 -year-old Gee heard the broadcast, located him, sick, in a $2-a-week furnished room. At week's end, near-toothless, gnarled Gee Jordan rose on his crutches, spruced up, eyed Florida as the place to end his days.

Court of Missing Heirs is the stoutly guarded radio feature of James F. Waters, a onetime Chicago lawyer, and Alfred E. Shebel, onetime ad agency man. They worked it out in 1935, peddled it for two years until Skelly Oil bought it in 1937. They went off the air in 1938 until CBS put it back on for Ironized Yeast last month. They have a field staff of five, digging up romantic and poignant cases. Neither has made a will of his own.

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