Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 22 April 1951 — Page 19
22, 1951
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Inside Indianapolis By Ed Sovola
GATHER around, children, Daddy is going to preach a sermon about the evils of slot machines. In the State Police garage at Stout Field he saw three of those dang infernal machines smashed to smithereens. A just end to a wicked Instrument, kids. Turn a deaf ear to the man who says playing
the slots is fun. Don’t believe the man who says he has spent an evening in some den of Iniqui
and it didn't cost him a dime because the slot
machine was hot, hot slot machine.
Open not your eyes in wonder when you hear tales about the excitement of watching plums, cherries, oranges, bells, lemons whirling around. Lady Luck has nothing to do with the payoff. 9% @
IT I8 sheer coincidence that Daddy can tell you what happens to the unwary person who ghoves a nickel or a dime in a slot. . He can tell you or two-man corporations that set out to beat the machine. He can tell you of the man who “knows” the mass of cold steel is ready to spill the jackpot. It works like this. Joe finds himself in the company of two or three friends who revel on the fringes of shady adventure, Men who know all about poker, dice games, roulette, horses.
: Companion Bill has three loose dimes that suddenly start burning a hole in his pocket. That happens in the presence of a slot machine.
Bill feeds in two and on the third he gets three
There is no such thing as a
INSIDE A SLOT—Cold, heartless, grasping
steel, not cherries, plums, oranges, lemons.
It Happened Last Night
By Earl Wilson
NEW YORK, Apr. 21 "My getting a television program,” Faye Emerson was telling me the other night, “was a week-end accident , . .” Darned clever accident, I thought. Brilliapt accident. 2 It happened about 18 months ago and now they sav the earning potential of this No. 1 Woman of TV i= $200,000 to $300,000 a year. Big pay comes to TV stars with a swiftness that makes the “overnight success” of movie stars seem almost slow. Faye was telling about it at 21. Her new Cadillac convertible, license No. FE-12, was at the curb. : “The accident happened,” Faye was saying, “in the fall of '49, from one Saturday to the next Monday .. ."” . “You haven't forgotten,” I asked her, “that I was part of the accident? I was your first guest star,” I announced with vast pride. She nodded that she remembered . . . but, if vou're interested in how fast things can happen in TV, let's go back just a bit farther. Just two vears ago this spring the TV panel
_ahows were beginning to bloém.
Fayesie was all over them, SS
ON JUNE 18, 1949. this column said Faye was *the woman guest star most in demand. Beautiful. well-read and witty, she's a fast ad-glibber. “With no movie ties forbidding TV, Faye's in
on the ground floor ahead of most glamourgals,” we wrote. So now it's four months later ... October, '49
Miss Diana Barrymore phoned to ask me to appear on an 11 p. m. TV program she was startIng Monday. Oct. 17. I remember riding the elevator to the CBS studio in the Grand Central Terminal building. When I got there, it turned out I was a guest star without a program. Diana Barrymore had become ill. She couldn't go on. She had already left. I left, too. . Davs later I was asked to be a guest on the show Fave Emerson was starting in Miss Barrymore's place, the next Monday. “Do you remember . . didn't have any script or anything?”, Faye recalls now. “We decided to do It hurriedly and there was no time . . J" I had to share the “guest” designation with Comedian Joey Adams, who talked quite a lot about a book he'd written. a “Up to that time, Faye says, “they didn't think anybody paid any attention to 11 o'clock shows. Our program sort of changed the thinking.”
* * ¢
THE TV PEOPLE began taking note because Faye's show immediately had a sensational rating
Thrill of a Lifetime By Jack Gaver
NEW YORK, Apr. 21—The small woman who dodged around in the middle of West 52d ‘8t. one night this week, adding a few gray hairs to the heads of taxi drivers, wasn’t trying ta add to the
traffic toll. Betty Smith, from Chapel Hill, N. C., was looking at her name in lights on the marquee of the Alvin Theater. She had waited a long time, so it was understandable that for a few moments she was oblivious to anything else. * & 2 “THE LIGHTS spelled out ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ based on the novel by Betty Smith” the writer said as she took a breathing spell in her hotel suite before the Thursday night opening of the musical. “I guess it was my biggest thrill, or rather this production is it. Bigger than when my novel became a best seller and brought me a lot of money; much bigger than when the movie version, with which I had nothing to do, was so successful. “You see, I am co-author of the libretto with George Abbott, who also produced and directed the show. It is a wonderful feeling to have it produced on Broadway.” yay
MISS SMITH'S first love was play writing and for years she turned out dramas. But most of them were one-acters intended for the amateur and community theater trade, which may be a living but is not Broadway success. Her few long
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Slot Machine Hearts Are Hard, Cold Steel
back. He's even. It's an old gambler's maxim that the winner has to be taken off. A dime disappears and the handle comes down. Three oranges appear, ® * o WELL, KIDS, general joy reigns. Bill says to Joe, “This machine is hot. I know it is. Do you want to split?” Joe's defenses are down. His throat begins to get dry and his fingers tingle. A jackpot would come in handy. It would give him a couple easy dollars to put in his mad money bank. “Let's hit 'er hard, Bill.” Do you think Joe and Bill hit the jackpot? No. Do you think they stop at $2.50 each? Corporations, you know, at the dime machine buy 50 per cent interest in a $5 roll of dimes.
Eventually the 50 dimes are gone. Joe is out $2.50. Bill says they ought to try to get their money back. He knows for a fact that the machine is hot. The bartender told him the jackpot hasn’t been hit in weeks. “Another roll of dimes, Joe. If we don’t hit we'll quit.” And so the story goes until Joe is broke. How well I know that story, kids. > > 2
OH, IT WAS A JOY to grasp a sledge hammer firmly and strike several telling blows at a slot. County Prosecutor Frank Fairchild was there. Sgt. Walter Weyland of the State Police and his buddies Detectives Larry Broderick and Richard Sutton and Troopers Hubert Roush, Ed McClain and Howard Hyslop were active in the demolition ceremony. It was the first time the working parts were revealed to me. Sgt. Weyland pointed out the three payoff ratchet wheels. These wheels determine the amount the sucker receives. There must be a 1000 levers, springs, cams, wheels and bolts and nuts on the inside. One pull of the handle sends them all into action, hungrily sucking in your money. The route of the coin was traced. I saw the jackpot box. It isn't pretty. It isn’t stainless steel or chrome and it isn’t decorated. The box is gray steel, cold, impersonal, strong. > @ < THOSE OF YOU who have ever had the urge to smash a slot machine will be happy to know that you get a wonderful feeling as the heavy hammer connects with a slot. The tinkle of bolts and nuts and cast iron sounds like music. One blow doesn’t do the job. It takes many, many solid strikes with the sledge hammer to pulverize the evil thing. The state police insist, too, that a slot must be reduced to the point where it can be picked up with a dustpan. When the job is over and you look at the remains all in a jumbled heap, you feel clean inside. Just as clean as if you had resisted all temptation and waved Bill down and refused to play. You don't feel as good, I'll admit, as vou do when you hit a quarter jackpot. but you feel good. Now, kids, get your jacks and rubber ball and I'll bet you . . . what am I saying?—let's play for fun.
Faye Cast in TV Role by Accident
B
+ + » then came the stories about the V-neck line and the crack by somebody that to watch Faye you had to have a V-shaped screen. And Faye
.was in.
“But I have never said anything vulgar or Indecent on my program, and anybody who says I have may get a punch in the eye,” threatens Faye, who's noted for her strength. Now Faye is making plans for the future, and any plans involve the two whom she calls “the boys’—her husband, Skitch Henderson, and her son, Scoop. “The boys went to see ‘Carmen’ this afternoon,” she told me. Skitch had taken Scoop to hear his first opera. “Skitch is a great talent. a big conductor some day. “The boys,” she added, “like to see me with my hair down. That's the reason I'm wearing it this way today, because I'll see them later. If I wear it down on my program, I get letters.” Faye would like Scoop to go to school a while in Switzerland where she and Skitch recently had a delayed honeymoon. At Zermatt, near the foot of the Matterhorn, she sprained an ankle skiing. “lI am determined to climb the Matterhorn myself some day,” she said. “There's an instructor there who says I'll have to start on the lower, smaller mountains first and it'll take a month to get ready. I want to do it. Skitch thinks I'm silly.”
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FAYE ADDED, ‘1 guess I'd better hurry. I'll be 34 pretty soon.” All her TV fame, Faye accumulated without Hollywood help. Indeed, she hasn't been back to California since 1946. She gambled that New York TV would put her over. It gave her far more recognition, and probably more money, too, than she could have found in Hollywood. Soon, though, she wants to return to her old home town, San Diego, where she was a cheer leader, and a speechmaker as a kid. “TI guess I must have been a horrible girl,” she says. The one thing Faye doesn’t like about TV is the necessity of watching her figure. “When I get old.” she says, “I'm not going to be elegant and skinny, I'm going to be plump and happy.” > % o TODAY'S BEST LAUGH . . . Ventriloquist Jimmy Nelson says that in Hollywood marriage may be an institution but it's certainly no trust company.
He's going to be
% S
WISH I'D SAID THAT ... Maestro Hank Sylvern met a television comedian who claimed he was suffering from laryngitis. “Oh,” exclaimed Hank, “a cold in your jest.” , , . That's Earl, brother.
Betiy Smith Sees Her Name in Lights
plays never made the grade. Success came only with her first novel, “A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.” “People always want to know how closely the show follows the book,” Miss Smith said. “All 1 can say that It has all of the book—and none of it. It is difficult to describe. Some of the leading characters are the same; but there are important new characters, too. I guess you can say that the feeling and intent are identical.”
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THE NOVEL was the story of a girl, Francie, growing up in Brooklyn in a tenement district, taking her from birth to college. . The show is primarily the story of the girl's parents, their romance and hard times. The first act, for example, is devoted to them before the birth of the daughter. The play ends when the daughter is only 13 years old.
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SOME characters prominent in the book have been dropped altogether. There is a shifting of emphasis in other cases. The fun-loving and amoral Aunt Sissy is still the elder sister of Katie, Francie’s mother, but in the show she has been responsible for rearing a motherless Katie. In the book, Katie's mother was an important character. “The only regret that Miss Smith has about the show is that the rehearsals and out-of-town tryout period made her miss the early sprihg that comes to Chapel Hill where she has some prize flower beds git
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| here 20 years ago,
The
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Indianapolis Times
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Unofficial Greeters—
‘Smiling F
| | i | | f
ARRIVING—Mrs. Hazel McCormack, Welcome Wagon hostess, leaves her
car to call on a newcomer to Indianapolis.
More Than 50 Welcome Wagon Hostesses
To Exchange Tips, Discuss Better Service By CARL HENN THE DOWNTOWN area of Indianapolis is due for | a temporary increase in smiling faces and good cheer. More than 50 young and middle-aged women—har- ! bingers of welcome, every one—will congregate here Friday and Saturday for the 5th annual state Welcome
Wagon convention. It's their job, every day, to carry greetings and warmth,. as well as. gifts
and information, to newcomers to their city, families moving within the city, new mothers, newly-engaged girls and girls just turning 16. That leaves little or no room for Gloomy Gerties within the organization. The women will gather to discuss their business, pass on to one another tips toward better service and greet Mrs. Rosanne Beringer, New York City, national vice president,
= ® = THE INDIANAPOLIS contingent will play hostess to the other state Welcome Wagoneers arriving Thursday for two days of business and pleasure.
That's as’ it should be, per-:-
haps. Indianapolis was the second city in the nation to see establishment of Welcome Wagon service. It was started and has
| never stopped growing.
{ must
The women who serve in it be personable, with a
| standing in the community. De- | pending on the number of calls
{| they
make, their income can range up to $600 a month for hostesses,
‘Wake Up or Blow Up—
‘We Can Win World's Heart By Serving’
| our level. nothing less.
Welcome Wagon is sparked
here by Mrs. Dorothy Hampson,
city supervisor for the last eight years. White-haired, stylish Mrs.
Hampson is a model of efficiency and good nature for Mrs. Hazel McCormack, assistant supervisor, and 16 hostesses who work in Indianapolis under her direction. . Also resident here is Mrs. Agnes Henderson, 132 N. Lin-
. wood Ave. state supervisor of
Welcome Wagon. ; Indianapolis hostesses aver-
aged a total of 1000 calls a month in 1950. = » »
WELCOME WAGON service was founded 21 years ago in Memphis,” Tenn., by Thomas W. Briggs, an enterprising newspaperman with an eye for the unusual. Mr. Briggs observed the need for newcomers for a friendly greeting, for information about their adopted city and the services they would need. He also saw a potential new market for businessmen, and shrewdly surmised that storeowners, shop-keepers and many others in the commercial world would
Helping Destitute People Help Themselves Will Block Reds, Says Famed Missionary
CHAPTER ONE By FRANK C. LAUBACH A THIRD world war can end in any horror, perhaps even the
destruction of the United States.
We can prevent that war. We
can prevent communism from taking the rest of the world. = The bottom four-fifths of the world are going Communist because they are hungry, terribly unhappy, and grimly determined
to rise out of their destitution,
We can stop communism cold by’lifting those wretched peo-
ple above their misery and desperation. We can do it by sharing our know-how. They love us when we help them. They hate us when we don't. They are not satisfied with old clothes, surplus food, loans of money. They want to rise to They will settle for
They lack progressive methods, and will follow any-
| one who promises to help them | rise.
| these | after
” » ” ! THE COMMUNISTS, out to capture the world, studied these desires and promised everything. Our error is that we gave masses few promises, Woodrow Wilson first promised and then cracked up. Since then little hope has been
| offered them. Our deeds have
| | |
been totally inadequate to the vast need. Where we did help, the results were miraculous. The few technical experts we sent abroad have had tremendous success. One missionary in every three helps with education and medicine, and a handful of mission-
aries help with agriculture, Everybody loves them and treats them like kings. Mis-
sionaries clamor for America to contribute this aid on a world scale. I have worked with mission aries in adult education in 68 countries.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Frank C. Laubach is a world-famous missionary whose “Each One Teach Ome” educational program has been adopted in 63 countries. As foreign representative of the National Council of the Churches of Christ, U.S. A,, he has taught more than 60 million illiterates to read in” their own language. Here, Dr. Laubach warns his fellow Americans that there is only one way to meet today’s crisis peacefully and effectively wand that by “applied Christianity.” This Is the first of six articles from his sensational book, “Wake Up or Blow Up.” just published by Fleming H. Revell. Dr. Laubach has spoken several times to large audiences in Indianapolis.
Dr. Laubach
I have worked with the educational departments of 350 governments. I have mingled with the illiterate three-fifths of the human race, taught them, listened to their pleas, séen their eagerness to learn, their boundless gratitude for a chance to learn, the pathetic way they follow any leader who loves them. Where we go with literacy, or
SUNDAY, APRIL 22, 1951
aces’ to Hold State R
GREETING—Mrs. McCormack introduces herself to Mrs. Phyllis Campbell
PAGE 19
who just moved into 3229 N. Drexel Ave., and Jenny Jane, 4 months.
HELPING—Along with information and helpful advice, Mrs. McCormack gives Mrs. Campbell articles and samples from sponsoring merchants, ;
gladly sponsor such a move in return for judicious mention of their products. His small beginning group of women grew quickly. Today,
Welcome Wagon embraces virtually every major city in the
medicine, or agriculture, they throng to us. love us, follow us, want our religion. They are as easy to win, if we
. are there to do it, as a hungry
man is to feed. ” ” ” NO COUNTRY which I have visited prevents us from carrying out our program of “each one teach and win one” Fifty countries invite us to help them. But there is less than one missionary, Catholic or Protestant, with technical training of any kind, for every 100,000 illiterate _ non-Christians. Not one missionary trained to write for new literates in two millions. Not one trained to agriculture for every two millions of new literates. The United Nations and the
y
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EACH .ONE TEACH ONE—A couple of French Camerouns put Dr. Laubach's theory into practice.
United States, Canada.
and many in
IN ADDITION to introducing the new resident, new mother, potential bride or girl of 16 to her clients, the Welcome Wagon Lady has on
United States have adopted a plan to help needy areas with technical aid.
Governments, business, philanthropv, andthe Church should unite’ in an all-out, na-tion-wide, world-wide attack on world poverty, disease and oppression by helping people to help themselves.
We could conquer the world's heart by serving it. as Jesus sald we should. But in this allout attack of help, the Church has a very basic responsibility. It must find the right kind of men.
The technicians will fail unless they have the type of character that the Church at its best produces: men with high honor, good habits, integrity, Christlike com-
warm heart,
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Unit Has Been Here for 20 Years
the tip of her tongue informas tion about schools, bus routes; church services, utility coms panies—all the things experi« ence has shown will be asked -for. : She is even called on, many times, to pitch in and help with upset or injured children, stoves that won't function, sudden emergencies and crises of every sort. : : - There's little selectivity about the calls. : In Indianapolis, for instance, 12,000 babies were born in 1950; Welcome Wagon hostesses saw 9000 of those babies—about all By was possible to reach in that e. :
14 » » THE WOMEN are trained by a two-week schooling period bes fore they begin calls to make their visits as pleasant and valuable as possible. = Sometimes, things go toe nicely, The hostesses have t6 develop a technique for leaving as well as arriving .s0 they can get to the next call. The sight of a friendly face and a basket full of gifts and samples more than once has inspired a flow of talk that threatened to go ‘om forever. The women enjoy their status as helpers of their neighbors in this organization, a unique mix« ture of social, civic and coms mercial aims. And they enjoy, perhaps even more, telling others about the membership of Welcome Wagon. Out of 6000 members in 1068 cities, only two—founder Mr. Briggs and Eric Lord, sales manager—are men.
passionate desire to help—democratic and congenial men whe are ‘‘color blind,” loving, and beloved , . . ” LJ o WITH 100,000 such men strategically planted ever the world, our Christian way of life would become popular. The counsels of violence, revolution, hate, murder, robbery, and lies would dry up and blow away because there would be nothing to be violent about. People don't want to murder anybody when they are hopeful and happy and grateful. At least half of those hundred thousand men should be supported by the churches. If we start this program on an adequate scale we shall have the desperate, retarded areas of the world back of us within two years, and the threat of this hour will melt like fog before the sun. Our experiences in many countries indicate that it ree quires from one to two years to change hatred to love, if we do it this way. Is this too good to be true? Not unless we are too selfish to try it. Let's try Christianity! It has never been tried by the nations. Being satisfied with half an answer is asking for disaster, If we fail because the majority refuse to help, if we are blown up we shall be able at least to face the great Judge and hear Him say: “Well done, good and faithful servant, . . . enter thou inte the joy of thy Lord.” If my message lacks polish, It was written to try to help save the
world. It was written to call America's attention s to the only issue that matters now: whether America will
wake up or blow up!
C ht, . ; TOMORROW: The War of
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