Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 18 May 1952 — Page 17

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. » Inside Indianapolis Bn Ed Sorala : TWO YEARS aio a friend of mine died o f a heart attack. You probably remember him, Paul Roberts, platter spinner for WFBM. He uséd to all himele the “Happy Monster.” mething happened the other day he wo have laughed about. Just casually I A one an acquaintance that its been two years since Paul died. It was a comment, a small remembrance, ; “Who did you say?” Ea The name was repeated, the name of the station was repeated along with the “Million Dollar Party,” Paul's late-eve-ning show, “Oh, ' yeah, Paul Roberts, I remember. Say, wasn't he a great guy?” Yeah, You leave with the

TWO YEARS AGO —"Paul Roberts, a

feeling that it would friend of mine, died of have been better not a heart attack."

to have mentioned Paul. Time moves along, day by day and the curtain gets tighter around that thing we call memory. Maybe it's a good thing, The shocking part about it all is how quickly ~ve forget. A good lesson for us all about the time we get to thinking the world or even a portion, mall portion, couldn’t possibly get along without us, < Not that Paul Roberts thought he was indispensible to radio or WFBM. He just .felt large responsibility to his job and listeners. And Paul Roberts’ fans were, in the main, the writing,

--telephoning kind, He made you feel strongly,

one way or another, the fence. I think I liked Paul the most for his honesty about Indianapolis. He had seen quite a bit of the country as a professional ball player, entertainer and radio announcer. He had experienced network broadcasting in “big” cities. But after a few months in Indianapolis you couldn't have dragged him away from here.

A listener was never on

o» oo oe

"HE _WAS ONE _of the first “names” in the-

city who put his arm around my shoulders and said, “Welcome.” Paul knew about the daily

It Happened Last Night

By Earl Wilson

NEW YORK, May 17—Over the years, Lizabeth Scott and I had known each other only over the telephone. Liz thought this was well enough to know me—maybe a little too well. But I'd seen, nay, even studied, photographs of “Tall, Tawny and Terrific,” who came out of the anthracite regions of Scranton, Pa., to conquer Hollywood in record time. I desired a closer look. It was arranged. And what an introduction. Before I beheld Long-Haired Liz herself, I was stunned to see a starched white half-slip, such as gals wear nowadays (according to well = founded rumors). It was standing upright on a seat in a corner booth in Toots Shor’'s bar. Sitting beside the erect slip was the Lady That's

Liz

+ Known as Liz.

“Isn’t that a slip?” I asked, inasmuch as the customers were looking at it...and at Liz... and at me . . . accusingly . . . wonderingly. “It’s a slip,” she agreed. “I took it off.” “Goodness, right in here?” I shuddered. It appears that she hadn’t stepped out of the slip right here in the bar and that she is not a gal to wander around toting a slip with her as a general thing. She'd been somewhere posing for a picture in a bouffant gown. The slip had been necessary. Now it wasn’t. But it had to be taken home, so she was carrying it along. I beg pardon. There was a young man from the studio who for the moment was Vice President in Charge of Liz Scott's Slip. ® @

THE SLIP kept falling on the floor. The young man would bend down and pick up the slip.. He would set it back .on the seat. If you, Mr. Man, have ever—but there, there, I'm sure yout haven't. - “That's going to be the most unsanitary slip in the world,” Liz said. : On this point there was no disagreement, especially after about nine times. . But maybe it was symbolic. For Liz feels that the kind of pictures she wants to do have been giving her the slip for several years now, “And I'm just corny enough to think I'm going to get the ones I want eventually,” she said, sipping a Dubonnet on-the-rocks. “I think my first film was closest to it.” She referred to “You Came Along.”

Americana By Robert C. Ruark

NEW YORK, May 17—The Kentucky Derby passed me by, and I still do not know who ran in it or anything except who won it and I think it was a horse named Bill Hale, or something like that. We have the Preakness—next month, is it? We have the Belmont Stakes, a sort of shindig that completes the squared circle, or the tippler’s crown, or some kind of sporting phrase like that. 2 The reason your boy is so vague about these vital portions of our life in this fine land is that he is cured, You can quit if you really want to. You get so you don't miss it.’ You do not quiver any more at post time, and a daily double or a whipsaw or a solid parlay means nothing. The time-passes when you have to snuggle down with a good bookie to be really happy. 0) oe oe I WAS SITTING around yacking with Sammy Renick, the graduate jockey who now tells you all about it for the Columbia Broadcasting System, and we were talking horse talk and it left me real chilly. There was a time when I was so far gone on the hides that the sight of a dray horse sent me into spasms which resulted in bankruptcy. Talking to even an ex-jock would have meant mandatory disaster in the hip pocket for the coming year. Renick does a right good job of mixing knowledge of horses and acquaintance with rich suckers, ‘and he was in on a really significant event, the first spot TV approach to the Derby. I got interested in his apprenticeship, donkey’s years back, but forgot to ask him who he liked in the Preakness. Allus I know about the Preakness is that it happens in Baltimore, (For some strange reason.) ;

* & o ’ ' IT 1S LIKE allus I know of Clem McCarth

these days is he wears a derby hat well and is ~

an old companion, apart from having the best social manners of any living man, There was a day when I looked at old Clem and saw Seabiscuit or War Admiral, looking oddly unhorsy in Clem’s derby hat. Everywhere I ‘looked, I saw horses. Horse fever is a very peculiar disease, which

sannot be cured by streptomycin. It comes upon . vou and induces madness, and if you live through’

the first flushes you are salted and immune. Some people die of it; other people stay sick with it all their born days. You can tell the permanent victims from other folks, because they are always pockmarked B we Pocketbook. ,

OLD customers may remember a society in Australia in 1945, which was named

I fo

i us a 1 . ol fet]

i .

. We Forget *

5 2 Too Quickly

effort and it was unusual, when we met, that he wouldn't have an idea for me. One time he took me to his platter shop to explain how a disc jocKey works, sonrething new in my field of experience. After explaining the technique ‘of handling the turntables and microphones, Paul walked out of the studio and I was left holding 15 minutes of a record show. Listeners, strangely enough, responded favorably, o Pb

HE: USED TO embarrass me with the number of times he would invite me to his home for dinner, Vera, Paul's-wife, always had about 10 minutes’ notice that she was going to have a hungry newspaperman at her table, Around the Press Club, Paul was a showpiece. He seldom disappointed the occasional visitor, a member of the unseen audience. In the category of celébrities, he alone knew what a fan expected and never disappointed him. Paul Roberts was the man with the aluminumrimmed glasses and cowboy boots. The suits he wore hit you in the eyes. He was big, easy to spot. Paul was “that big guy with the bright sport shirt and Orson Welles voice.” When you were obliged to. point out other “names” in the newspaper or radio field to a visitor. the typical reaction went something like this: “No, is that So-and-80?” Not Paul Roberts.

* + @

AT PRESS-RADIO baseball game practices, Paul was always on deck with Kirk, his oldest .boy. He's 12 now and if he isn't a baseball player when he grows up, I'll be surprised. Mark, who is 4, I don’t know. Vera tells me he eats Like a pony. Perhaps he'll eat like a horse someay. You folks who knew Paul might be interested in knowing that Vera is: well and is working as a teletype operator at RCA. I remember when Paul had his first heart attack, got over it and came back laughing. He couldn't take it easy, He was interested in too many projects. Television was his personal baby. WFBM was getting a new station up the street. Paul had ideas. Then--bingo—the Program Director called. Someplace Paul is probably taking all this in

and laughing and shaking his head saying, “Hey,

Ham; knock it off, I've got an idea for you.” Ho wabout hearing from-some of you Roberts fans, what do you say?

Beauteous Liz Scolt Is an Avid Reader

FEW GALS have become a star in their first

picture. Her discoverer, Hal Wallis, didn’t fool around. Just made her a star right off. I studied her now (when I wasn’t helping pick up the slip). Physically, she measured up—and out, Mentally, she was even more than I had anticipated. “They tell me you are a Ralph Waldo Emerson fan,” I said. “Yes, but I've read a lot of other things, Chekhov's short stories, for example. Turgenev, Dostolevsky ...” But anybody who'd talk literature with Liz Scott would talk accounting with Marilyn Monroe, Liz said she’d just been in Atlanta on a movies-are-better-than-they-used-to-be tour. GP» bh TO ME it was interesting that Liz considers 1944 “the good old days.” To me 1944 is practically last night. . That was when she arrived here with money fo go to drama school for a year, She snagged an $18-a-week job selling stockings on 42d St. then got in a road company of “Hellzapoppin’,” played 47 states, saved $324, and came back to New York to hang around all summer waiting for a break, “I found out you could rent little maid’s rooms at the Hotel Des Artistes. Just little closets with a bath, I got one and lived on sandwiches—also on ham, eggs, toast and coffee which you could get then for 30c.” One day she attracted the attention of Broadway Joe Russell. The girl doesn't live who doesn’t attract the attention of Joe Russell, a press agent and talent scout. (He happens to like their looks.) He has found some great ones. He and a friend, Irving Hoffman, Broadway columnist for the Hollywood Reporter, mentioned her to Hal Wallis. 4 < BY THIS time she was a veteran of the Broadway stage—one. performance in “Skin of Our Teeth” for Miriam Hopkins whose understudy she was. Wallis signed her. ‘She’s now done 17 pictures. Her next to be seen here will be “Red Mountain,” with Alan Ladd. : “What do you think of some efforts to play down sex in pictures?” I asked her. “I think Hollywood should never forget sex.” she said. “You weren't afraid it would, were you?” As “I said “No,” Liz and her escort were slipping away-—with the slip. - . > SS WISH I'D SAID THAT: Thirty is a nice age for a woman, says Ed Herlihy—especially if she happens to be 40.—That’s Earl, brother.

No More Horses, i

He Got Smart

Horseplayers Anonymous. I founded it from necessity, and also from hunger, It involved mutual aid, such as never leaving a neophyte alone/for a second, because telephones work in Australia and bookmaking is legal except when called 8. P., or starting price. The 8. P. bookmakers only pay the cost the-old gluepot rates when he toes the line. re The idea was that we took the brisk walks and the cold showers when post time came up at Randwick or Moonee Valley, and old Drumnet or Sleepy Fox was around for Darby Monroe to exercise his imagination on. Darby had alot of imagination, for a jockey. Sometimes he actually won on purpose.

oe oe oo I FOUNDED Horseplayers§ Anonymous the day I saw the owner of a horse named Fermanagh (33 to 1), slug the horse’s trainer because the horse won and the trainer forgot to tell the owner. I was down to a thin shilling, and figured that a thin shilling was not enough to eat on forever at the rate I was going. And you know, 7 years later, I feel just as good as if I were in fine standing with the bookies. I can hear Renick tell about horses and not dash for the phone. I can associate with horseplayers and listen sympathetically, because I am cured. I hate horses. Really, And Lord, how I wish I were at Pimlico with the rent money on something. Anything, so long as it's a horse.

Dishing the Dirt By Marguerite Smith

Q-—How do you use Krilium? Reader. A—Krilium is’a trade name, It designates one special form of the chemical poly-acrilonitrite. Whether you buy this particular form of it or buy the chemical under another trade name (so far only one other is on the market, Soil Life) you will need to read directions on the package. By next year there will doubtless be any number of different trade names on the market for the same chemical. Now as to Krilium itself. It is currently being put out as a powder called a “merloam formulation.” Directions from the manufacturer for its use emphasize one point in particular. That it be used exactly according to directions. No guess work.

40 sq. ft. to a depth of six inches. Or, of course,

‘you might use the same amount on 80 sq, ft. td -

a depth of three inches. Spread exactly half the entire amount over the soil surface evenly, (Soil must be dry enough to be easily crumbled). Spade

‘this in, mixing well. Spread the second half over

the freshly spaded surface. Mix again thoroughly.

. The other available form of poly-acrilonitrie, Soil

Life, requires completely different handling. So “be sure.to read package directions. ; : iT . ; E 3 a, x . iv

: ° Aes . :

The five-pound package will wove

via REE

~The Indianapolis Times ul

Medicina ai sais

YOUNG

@ ”

REEDS—Part of the clarinet section of

the all-city elementary and junior high school band here tootle away during a strenuous Saturday morning rehearsal at Techincal High School.

There's Been Nothing

Like It Since '41

MORE THAN 6200 school students will participate this week in the first city-wide music festival since 1941.

Under general supervision of Ralph W. Wright, director of public school music, programs will be given at 8 p. m. Wednesday by high school musicians and 8 p. m. Friday by elementary and junior high school musicians in the Coliseum. The festival will mark the first city-wide participation of high school students, Mr. Wright said. Only elementary and junior high pupils took part in the 1941 program. Some 2000 high school singers and instrumentalists will appear Wednesday. They in-

Wellin

By DAVID WATSON HUGE paddles pounded

into’ the" muddy water and the Steamship Franklin

Pierce churned along in the

Ohio River. On the bridge, Capt. Wellington W. Withenbury searched with sharp eyes for the sandbars which shoaled' the river near Louisville. He and his pilot, like all rivermen, were nervous in the tricky passage. Deck hands swung their lead lines, singing the water's depth in the traditional chant of the river. And the Franklin Plerce

plowed her way along, upward

| N : lili

. . -

PILOT HAMILTON—His license against $800.

{

PRIORITY CARGO-=Off the Niles came 7 ‘whisky and gin. Sa

wo -

woe

ay 3g os ah i; oN Ee, . <i pi.

clude a boys’ chorus of 400, a girls’ chorus of 700, a mixed chorus of 500 and some 200 each in massed band and orchestra, » ” .

GUEST CONDUCTOR for the high school choral numbers will be Lewis H. Diercks, Columbus, 0., director of the Ohio State University Symphonic Choir, Directing the all-city band and all-city orchestra will be Joseph E. Skornicka, supervisor of instrumental music in the Milwaukee, Wis., school system. Elementary and junior high choruses appearing Friday evening will total 4000 voices, Mr, Wright said, about evenly divided between fifth and sixth grades and junior high. A feature of this concert,

ton W.

bound from New Orleans to

_ Cincinnati.

It was Feb. 20, 1854. Capt. Wellington W. Withenbury paced his bridge in the winter wind and his glance wandered from the frozen slopes of Indiana and Kentucky back to the channel,

And then he saw it. Ahead was a floundering steamer, with a hole in its botton and its decks awash. It was about to go over the falls. Cargo and crew were in peril. River captains gambled their jobs on their ability to make speedy, sound decisions on the errant Ohio. Capt, Withenbury was no exception. ; Quickly he decided to risk his boat, his safety and a $150,000 cargo to reach the stricken vessel. His decision was to crowd the pages of Record One in the Federal District Court admiralty records here. It is ‘the. oldest admiralty case to be found among the musty records of the Federal Court's storage room, The dauntless captain was suing owners of the sinking vessel for salvage rights. No one knows exactly what Capt, Wellington Wi Withenbury thought on that winter day. But according to the court records this is what happened: £ “. .. being on a voyage in the ,.. Steamer Franklin Pierce from New Orleans in the State of Louisiana to Cincinnati, In the State of Ohio, (we) discovered on the Ohio River between the State of Indiana and the State of Kentucky, a

steamer with two barges in

a4 S22: BR een

37 bartels of

SUNDAY, MAY 18, 1952

6200 Pupils Play: In Festival 3

BUSY 88-—Mark Edwards, School 34, all-city orchestra, digs into the 88 keys wi

the vocal part of which Mr, Wright himself will conduct, will be a boys’ junior high

STAND BY—The steamboat Franklin Pierce churns to the Ohio River rescue of the sinking

ianist of the sure fingers.

chorus of 900 voices. “That's. just about the time their voices start changing, and this cho-

Withenbury Wins

CELUST —K hér eyeonthemusic, Leonard, School 70, i 4 playing first-chair cello. =

rus really ought to be some. thing,” was Mr, Wright's com» ment. 2 :

® » = rol THE JUNIOR high gitls’ chorus. will total 1100, he sddod 4 >

Elementary and junior ihigh band and orchestra nuniber about 75 players each, “Thi is the first time we've divided band from orchestra,” Mr, Wright explained. T In charge of orchestral:rehearsing are Miss Albérta Denk, John Shepard and Jafhes Compton of the local schools’ music department, x Training the band are R Funk, Lewis Rutan, E. L. Brit.

tan and Laurence Leggett,

5 5

Lid)

FEL

VEEL NEY

James M. Niles in this scene of 98 years ago, as envisioned by Artist Hugh O'Donnell,

tow, disabled, helpless, going over the falls of the River Ohio, at Louisville , . .” » - » IT WAS sinking, the old skipper said. Then, “at great peril and danger to himself and his crew,” Capt. Withenbury coaxed the Franklin Pierce through the powerful current to the side of the floundering vessel, the James M. Niles. On this day, 98 years ago, the river was still the major shipping artery for the states which bordered it. Fortunes were made and lost on it. And Capt. Withenbury’'s decision involved property valued at more than a quarter mililon dollars. The cargoes in the two boats alone touchédl that figure. If the bills of lading dboard the Niles were an indication, an insatiable thirst also existed in New Orleans, her destination. The Niles carried 697 barrels of whisky and 40 barrels of gin, in addition to the lard, butter, furniture and bacon aboard. According to court record, it was no simple operation to

‘ swing the Pierce alongside the

Niles, It required special skill to buck the muddy current. To support this, the pilot who aided Capt. Withenbury. entered his testimony, ” ” ~ JAMES R. HAMILTON identified himself as a licensed pilot on the Louisville side of the river, “, .. the Niles was wrecked trying to pass down the falls

‘os + he said.

He declared it was his belief ‘the ‘boat “could not have been saved by those operating her, without aid. Nor could the lives

of the passengers have been

on saved.” -

He told how Capt. Withen-

_ bury was preparing to “ascend

the falls” when he saw the Niles in distress. Capt. Withenbury wanted to help, but could not without the aid of “a skill

4. ihe Rin

ful pilot,” which Mr. Hamilton identified as himself. He explained Capt. Withenbury asked him to take the job of working the boat up to the Niles. He took the job, he said, at the risk of his life and pilot's license. Everything was conducted in “extreme peril.” The Niles was all but gone. Her anchors, the boilers, the cabin and the lifeboat had been swept away. Four members of the Niles’ crew had abandoned ship, gambling their future in the vawl they succeeded in launching. But Capt. Wellington W, Withenbury boarded the Niles and hooked up his towlines after removing passengers. His trip to New Albany with the disabled boat was untroubled.

» » o BUT CAPT, WITHENBURY hadn't heard the last of the Niles. He bumped into opposition when he filed his claim for salvage rights.

Porm

Insurance companies on Poth sides of the river had unflerwritten the Niles’ cargo. = They minimized Capt. With. enbury’'s exploit contending his rescue was devoid of danger, and that he made his appréach ’ to the Niles at the foot ofthe falls in calm water. = : Federal Judge Elisha = M. Huntington, presiding in Sthe District of Indiana, had Zhis judicial hands full, EveryBpdy had a proposal to make, =

He finally brought the Hick. eting under control by order. ing U. 8. Marshal Johmt L. Robinson to return the Niles to her owners to preserve:the shipment in her holds. : But Capt. Withenbury came out in good shape, too. = The court awarded him Pilot Hamilton got $800 and two other men, unidentified, split another $800. And at the 1854 dollar that wasn't too bad.

» . »

= : value, - = =