The Barker

In Dallas one day last week a sharply tailored old man climbed into a custom-built beige Chrysler, and headed through the wahooing streets to the fair grounds. There, with a minimum of speechifying, Bob Thornton, 73, snipped a ribbon with a pair of diamond-studded shears and proclaimed the opening of the 1953 State Fair--the biggest in Texas and therefore, in Texan logic, the biggest in the world. Then, as the calliope tuned up and the first of more than two million fairgoers poured down the midway, Thornton turned sadly back to the city and the unfinished business of being mayor of Dallas.

For Mayor Bob, the State Fair is the high point of the year. In 1904, as a raw youth from Texas' back prairie, he went to St. Louis to see the World's Fair, and lost all his money matching pennies with a "very agreeable fellow who said he was a Texan, too. from Amarillo." Ever since, Bob has had a hopeless affair with fairs and carnivals, and today he is the best barker Dallas ever had, and one of the best in the awesome tent show of Texas.

Sell That City. After a shaky career as farm hand, clerk, traveling salesman and partner in a bookstore, Thornton settled down in a mortgage business in an office over a Dallas cigar store. The business grew into the present Mercantile National Bank, one of Dallas' Big Three. Although Bob became a bank president and a local big shot, he made his reputation as a supersalesman. "Everybody's got to sell," he says. "Preacher's got to sell his sermon, butcher's got to sell his beefsteak." And Thornton had to sell Dallas.

For 30 years, Banker Thornton has boosted Dallas with the fervor of a man in love. In 1935, as president of the Chamber of Commerce, he persuaded the legislature that Dallas, by virtue of its progressive spirit and convenient location, was the right site for the Texas Centennial--although both San Antonio and Houston had better historical claims. The Centennial--in Dallas--was a stampeding eyecatcher, and it was only natural, afterwards, that Thornton should turn his attention to the creaking old State Fair.

No Rats in a Tub. Booster Bob built the fair up to Texas-style proportions, too, with everything from prize Herefords and mohair goats to Ethel Merman and Mary Martin. He enlarged the Cotton Bowl, wooed out-of-state industries and raised prodigious amounts of money for the Dallas Symphony.* An effortless worker, he delegates authority freely, but expects his associates to be always on the ready line ("If it's gonna be a do meeting, O.K. If you're gonna run around like rats in a tub, I don't want any part of it"). No one goes to a meeting with Thornton without being well-prepared.

Last spring Dallas gave the old man its highest honor, named him mayor (TIME, April 20). The city has had no cause to regret its choice. Thornton is a shrewd, indefatigable administrator who runs Dallas as he has promoted Dallas, with rambunctious enthusiasm and complete faith in the city's destiny. In six months he has won the unanimous, misty-eyed loyalty of the city council (rare in Dallas). Said Councilman Arthur Kramer Jr. last week: "He thinks and talks about Dallas all the time, never about himself. The rest of us think we're being pretty daring if we think in terms of a Dallas of 1,000,000 population. He's thinking of a Dallas of 2,000,000 people, and he approaches any problem with that in mind, whether it's streets, sewers, water supply or whatever. He says 'We think big, and we've got a taste for the best.' And he pulls you right along with him."

* He would do most anything, Thornton said, to give Dallas the best "band" possible, but he'd be danged if he'd listen to it. On the bank's 33rd birthday, the symphony sent a string ensemble down to play Bob's favorite piece, Birmingham Jail.

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