Convention City

Last week Philadelphia brimmed with comedy, tragicomedy and a few dashes of pure drama. First tragicomedy came when a 42-year-old elephant named Lizzie died at the Zoo, prompting the New Dealish Record to watch for other signs of impending Republican doom. Last week Lizzie's cousin Josephine had been named official symbol of the Republican Party. l

> Candidate Frank Gannett saved the day by importing three live elephants, marched them incessantly through the streets. Senator Robert A. Taft also had elephants (of papier-mache): one in the quiet dignity of his ballroom headquarters at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel, two perched on the marquee outside. Candidate Taft also had 100 rooms for his staff and the support of Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who said, in her best Alice-blue style, "The Willkie campaign comes right from the grass roots of every country club in America."

> Both Messrs. Taft and Gannett showed campaign movies, but found few takers for such 16 mm. cinema. Of the ten candidates, only Mr. Gannett, a Dry who will not accept beer advertising in his 17 newspapers, formally served free liquor to callers. Only Mr. Gannett hung the hotel lobby and the uncomplaining streets with 15-foot portraits of himself, in color.

> Little Thomas E. Dewey, arriving late and flustered for press conferences, sometimes heard impatient reporters yell, "Bring in Willkie!" Dewey had the biggest piles of campaign literature, the satisfaction of having led the Gallup Poll for 15 months. He was left with both.

> From Buffalo came the Uncle Sam Marching Club, resplendent in peppermint pants and top hats with signs telling delegates to "Vote for Dewey." A girl band tooted, marched, got shiny-nosed in Mr. Dewey's cause, collapsed between parades in his hotel lobby.

> No zippy theme song like Landon's Oh! Susanna or Roosevelt's Happy Days Are Here Again rocked Philadelphia's vast, egg-shaped Convention Hall. Slogans were as uninspiring as the candidates they sought to tout--slogans like "Trust-in-Taft," "A Top Scholar--Taft," "Do It With Dewey," "Gannett--America's Best Bet," and Vandenberg's labels on yellow fans, which came in handy in the hot Convention Hall--"Fan with Van."

> In the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, in the Benjamin Franklin, in the Hotel Walton, elevators were stacked to the gates, shot by the middle floors. Drugstores made enormous sales of Scholl's foot powder.

Telephone switchboards seemed always to have all lines busy except late at night, when they were taken over by operators who said "Huh?" or "0. K." Most of the delegates missed seeing the brief Mummers' Parade--a Philadelphia spectacle usually put on on New Year's Day, revived especially for the Convention--because it marched while Herbert Hoover spoke.

> Seeking to emulate radio, which got its first big lift from the 1924 Democratic Convention, television backers gave their product its first big play. Individual close-ups of speakers showed up well on the screen; long shots were fuzzy.

> Nearly all the 68 unemployed who were given jobs cleaning up the Convention Hall (under button-shoed Governor James's "Work or starve" law) turned out to be ardent New Dealers. Their take: ten to 30 tons daily of cigaret butts, red Taft carnations (handed out fresh to each delegate each day), campaign literature, assorted debris.

> In a packjammed elevator in the Benjamin Franklin. Wendell Willkie's 250-lb. brother Ed was recognized, admitted "Yes, ma'am, I'm his baby brother," responded to commiserations on Mr. Willkie's exhausting ordeal: "Oh, he's like a mule: he just rolls over and then he's all right."

> Negro delegates enjoyed their quadrennial privilege of being received at swank hotels.

> Optimistic Colonel Carl Estes, right-hand adviser to Republican Angel Joe Pew, bet even money right up to convention time on Governor James. James was a 100-to-1 shot in most books. Odds on Willkie's nomination were even on Tuesday, dropped slightly on Wednesday, fell as low as 1-to-4 just before the balloting began on Thursday, when rumors of a Taft-Dewey deal began to be accepted as fact.

> For the $200,000 it paid to snare the convention, Philadelphia grossed $12,000,000. But bellboys and cab drivers grumbled that tips were juicier in 1936, when patronage-laden Democrats whooped Franklin Roosevelt into Candidacy II.

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