The Colonel & the Dolls

The Chicago Tribune, whose daily circulation has slipped about 20% in the last seven years from 1,076,045 in 1946 to 885,840 this year, decided to try an old circulation stunt to boost its sales. The plan was to give away free dolls for every three new subscriptions to the paper. But the circulation men reckoned without the Trib's aging (73) Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick, who huffily frowned on the idea as undignified for the "World's Greatest Newspaper." The circulation men gently persisted, suggested that the dolls were really quite handsome, and urged the Colonel to descend from his tower office and take a look at samples. Grudgingly, the Colonel agreed; however, he made a slight mistake.

Instead of getting off on the second floor, where the Trib's circulation department is, he got off at the ad department on another floor. At the desk in front of the elevator sat a receptionist who had never exchanged a word with the Colonel before, though she well recognized his commanding presence. "Where are the dolls?" asked the Colonel sternly. Knowing nothing of the dolls, but thinking of the sea of empty desks around her, the flustered receptionist blurted out: "They've all just gone to lunch." Rank impertinence, the Colonel later thundered to his aides: off with her head. But later he calmed down, agreed not to fire the receptionist and approved the circulation plan. Last week the results of the Colonel's approval were apparent in the Trib's Christmas season ads for its doll giveaway: "A REALLY GREAT GIFT IDEA."

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