Giveaway Fadeaway

Tall, toothy John J. Noone, a Washington postal clerk, set about wooing Lady Luck in a scientific sort of way. Forming a syndicate with seven relatives and friends (each was assessed $5), Noone made repeated trips to Manhattan in the hope of being chosen a contestant on the CBS giveaway program Hit the Jackpot. Last April the lightning struck; Noone won prizes grandiloquently announced as worth $28,000.

This week, the syndicate faced the more realistic prospect of dividing up something less than $7,000, before taxes. Biggest chunk of cash came from the sale of a Chrysler sedan for $2,300. An auction of a large part of the loot (a living room suite, three rugs, a TV set, "$1,000 worth" of books, bedroom furniture, a diamond ring, wrist watch and assorted luggage), all of which was valued at nearly $9,000, brought in about $3,000. The syndicate would also be well-clad for a while: a Chicago tailoring firm had agreed to make up $1,000 worth of men's & women's suits for any & all of them, with no time limit on when they had to collect. Another $1,000 in shirts (valued at $3.65 each) was being gradually peddled off at $2 a shirt.

But two of the prizes (roundtrip plane rides to the North Pole and Venezuela) were nontransferable and Noone was afraid that if he should go ("I'd rather go to Richmond on a bus"), he would have to pay income tax on the cash value of the journeys. Deciding against $1,000 in knitwear, Noone asked the manufacturer for a cash settlement. He was offered $100,

Noone was particularly depressed about the nonarrival of two complete home gymnasiums, one of which he assigned to a neighborhood boys' club. Telegrams and registered letters seemed to have no effect on the manufacturer. He complained to the network, and parts of one gymnasium finally have begun trickling in. Worn out in the scramble to peddle his winnings, Noone took a dim view of the producers of the giveaway show, who had promised to cooperate in collecting the booty. Said he, glumly pondering his bonanza: "They get you into their offices and make you think they're giving you the world on a string--and then they cut the string."

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