Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 13 June 1952 — Page 21

\q lo Pp, Ss.

£8 Aya

Janay Lntianapell

an ae = i wound up in a small Interesting. I don’t mind saying it wasn’t easy for a boy who was reared in an a where everything, including the homestead, was bought for cash, to walk into a loar office. ? The man who loaned money to people was pictured as’ a bogeyman. - The motto at home was: “If you don’t have the money, do without. Don’t be beholden to anyone.” : During the past few months, spots (actually the spots were § signs) have been floating in front of my eyes. There are ain times in a man's life, even though he is in adequate shape financially to buy bread, when he'd like to have a piece of cake, ¢* © @

INFORMATION was needed. I knew Robert C. Hamilton, executive secretary of the Indiana Association of Installment Credit Companies, Inc, had it. Hi: daughter, Rudy, was a classmate of mine at Indiana University. There certainly wasn’t any danger of walking into his

office in a suit and coming out wearing a barrel.

“Ever been to a loan company?” asked Mr.

Hamilton. “No. »

“Do you know anything about the operation?”

. “No.”

“We're going to have to start from scrateh,”

added Mr. Hamilton, intending no joke. After we had the IU football team and the new coach squared away, Mr. Hamiiton began his class by saying he was extremely happy that he could clear up misconceptions about the small loan business. 0 & “SMALL LOANS are big business,” smiled Mr. Hamilton. “Last year in Indiana 473,475 small loans were made totaling $108,093,618.45.” (A small loan means under or up to $500.) He said he was proud of the state of Indiana for being one of the first to pass a small loan law, The first legislative step in licensing and making it tough for the “loan shark” was taken in 1917. “Why do people consider and have the impression ‘that the interest rates are so high on small loans?” Mr. Hamilton asked.

It Happened Last N ight

By Earl Wilson y

NEW YORK, June 13—“Love’s Labor's Loused” isn’t .quite the way Shakespeare wrote it, but that’s the trend today in our Big City. In the Battle of the Buck between Eleanor

July 18 with the James Lehrers to stay till A 15. The big dollar duel will probably be carried over till fall . , . to compete with the World Series. = Billy tells me he now has a “Daddy Rose's Boys’ Town” on his Mt, ‘Kisco estate. Members: “Two-time-losers” Marc Connelly, Clifford Odets, Deems Tayler and. E, Ray Goetz. winht-midoighioa- limousine drives. up,-and all “Yhie “Wom ve ter-leavel-All- the gals. ; ave ti sure I heard him right, $00; .

Holm and Billy Rose, Eleanor’s flying to I Ads, 000

FRAN WARREN, the Bronx thrush, denied it to me, but she’s having papers drawn up for a separation from husband Harry Steinman, the Los Angeles cafe operator who's still mad for her. . Jack Carson and Paul Hartman of “Of Thee I Sing” are laughing. First night the show's cut rates went in, who was in the audience but— Jack Benny. . Didie Dept.: Oscar Winner Judy Holiday—expecting in November—tells me she and Geo. Oppenheim, the record executive, “are hoping for one of each sex ..."” Mimi Benzell—after her dramatic stint on Robert Montgomery's TV show Monday—will withdraw from her public to await her baby around —(joke)—"“Labor Day.” ¢ wo FRED ALLEN says his new TV quiz show will teach people things. “Only thing TV has taught anybody so far,” he says, ‘is to turn it off.” “I'm going up to Boston to see my doctor,” Fred added. “He isn’t feeling very well.” > o> 9

ERROL FLYNN was night clubbing in broecaded dinner jacket and brown shoes (also pants), ready to leave for England, Scotland and Italy to make three pictures. He might like Jack Benny's story of their trip to Korea. “Flynn was along,” Jack said, “as sort of a chaperone. One day I had 500 calls from mothers looking for their daughters. I even had one call from a daughter looking for her mother.” : Sd 0B COMEDIAN Jack E. Leonard (of the Riviera) is a pice, lovable, non-bragging guy, who blushes when complimented. When Mickey Alpert congratulated him on his beautiful tan, he replied, “Yeah, but you know, under this tan, I'm as pale as a ghost.”

Americana By Robert C. Ruark

NEW YORK, June 18—I will take more exception to the fact that they bounced a growing boy out of school for growing a mustache than I will muster over the appointment of Gen. Douglas MacArthur as keynoter of the Republi-

can National Convention, since it seems to me that the first is more vital to our time than the second. This is a fine country, in- & .deed, if a young man of 16 - = cannot grow a lip fringe and still maintain his social standing in the ninth grades To my knowledge there are no laws against the sprouting of facial adornment, save the simple law of ability to sprout same. . This is a purely personal piece. I grew my first mustache "dt"16, too, and the fact that I : was a touch farther along the educational pathway has nothing to do with the ethics involved.’ Even as in the case of Tony Valada of Binghamton, N. Y., I owned sufficient hairs to make a fine and lusty showing. This did something for my self-esteem, and I am quite sure I drew a second glance from the typing-shorthand teacher, who had hitherto ignored me. >

> 2 @

NO WOMAN CAN understand this, but there are times when a man is constrained to grow hair, like the young Samson, and when a bunch of meddlesome people tell him to cut it off, the house falls down. Some people are born to wear mustaches, and beards, as some people are born to run for office or be generals. I cannot think, for instance, of Gen. MacArthur as anything but a general. Even as a child he looked like & general. Along the same lines, this Tony Valada, even as yours truly, scanned himself in the mirror and felt that something was missing There is a gertain vacancy of face, a callow look of calfhood, that screams for an addition. The addition is hair on the lip. It shortens the nose, thins the upper lip, and strengthens the chin. Very few people are capable of living up to the heavy demands of a mustache. When Gov. Dewey blew the presidential duke for the second time, I briefly headed a movement to have him forcibly shaved. You will notice, that while we did not entirely succeed, he dwindled down the hairline to a precious few.

ode

I AM WONDERING today what Judge Medina and Big Tom Murphy, both mustache-men ‘in the finest tradition, are thinking of this Fascist motion in Binghamton which flings a child out of grade school for the sin of cultivating follicles: on his facé. We may have locked a budding president in embryo so to speak. A boy with guts enough to brave his room with a William

thought about money the’ office.

Those Small Loans Are Big Business Of course, he had to answer the question. Besides the factor that the only security in most small loans is the borrower's earning power, there is the cost factor, bookkeeping expense, collecting expense, cost of making investigations. Handing cold, Kard cash out to anyoné who wants it indiscriminately isn't a good business practice. Then he kicked up this thing called declining principal balance, which, he said, many persons don’t have clearly in mind. He was talking to one of those persons, eS» ; MR. HAMILTON used a $100 loan as an example at the usual 3 per cent monthly interest rate.. Payments were theoretically set at $10

the gfounds;” sald Bifly-And-Im- EAL your front door,” said Jack

for 10 months. So, the first month it would be $13; $10 payment and $3 interest. The second months the interest would be computed on the balance, $90. That would be $2.70. With the $10 payment the borrower would fork over $12.70. The interest rate scales down as the principal is paid off. Mr. Hamilton showed the net earnings from the $108 millions loaned in 1951 in Indiana. It was 5.88 per cent and he said that compares to the rates of income any reputable business expects from its investment. Main reason why a person will borrow a small amount, he:said, was to consolidate debts and restore credit. The credit angle worried me. Are 'we or are we not a natin of debtors? 4 FEDERAL RESERVE figures showed that outstanding consymer credit is less today in relation to disposable personal income than it was in 1941. Disposable personal income means after taxes. : : : * The DP income in 1941 was $92 billions. Consumer credit outstanding was $8,826,000,000 or 95 per cent. In September of 1951, DP income was $224,700,000,000 and total eonsumer credit outstanding was $19,528,000,000 or:8.7 per cent. Loan companies are expimitiad like banks by state officials. Mr. Hamilton took me to one loan company. We met the manager and watched customers come and go. Right friendly folks. The manager said the secret of staying in business was having satisfied customers. Can't beat that philosophy.

More Romances "Are Busting Up

SAM GOLDWYN'LL be jealous of this: In 8t. Bernard's Parish, La., where gambling's been closed, Sheriff Dutch Rowley said:

“There’s nothing wrong with gambling. It's only been made illegal by people who pass laws: ainst it.” * * @ COMEDIAN Jack Waldron couldn't get into one swank cafe for months, then happened to get a hit show, “Pal Joey,” and sat on the dais at . a banquet attended by the cafe's proprietor. o..J8ck,” fawned the saloonist. “You haven’ i} Ea fp . re RE VET "e 1s 2. em ” t

FAT Rs wh ee Y

¥ying-to-ge

Your doorman to admit me." . “iW

THE MIDNIGHT EARL ... Actor Mervin Vye's estranged wife, Christine, just had a baby daughter in Washington. Vye’s been making a movie in Hollywood, and hoping to marry Robin Mertimer Ella Raines took a beautiful home in: Cornwall-on-the-Hudson. Her husband, Col. Robin Olds, has a big secret Air Force assignment . . . Jacqueline Susann is hostess on Lew Parker's “Surprise Store” TV show. . The decision whether Tallulah Bankhead’ll do TV will be made this week. No contract’s been signed . . . Natalie Thompson's California . friends say she and Clark Gable ended it all and she'll return to NY and start over . , . Ingrid Bergman keeps going in and out of the hospital. She's upset by the battle over her daughter, Pia. SDB

EARL’'S PEARLS ... “In New York.” says Lisa Kirk, “the best way to kill an hour is to drive once’ around the block.” Lucky Luciano’s gal gets called “Mrs. Luci-

Jacqueline

- ano” around Naples and Capri. But Lucky intro-

duces her as “my lady friend” . . . President Batista’s helping build Veradero' Beach, Cuba, into the “New Riviera.” Twenty-five new hotels are planned . .. Joe Pasternak phones Nancy Valentine . . . Dancer Katherine Lee expects to marry Dick Gray, Dolores’ brother, in September, ew TAFFY TUTTLE tells Lester Lapin of an ab-sent-mirided executive who took his wife to dinner and phoned his secretary he'd work late... That's

Earl, brother.

Every Child Should Grow a Mustache

Howard Taft memorial under his nose cannot be lacking in the kind of courage we need today. What we lack in this nation is a man with spunk enough to face a razor daily and still landscape the area above his teeth with a coldly appraising eye and firm hand. I will take it a step along and suggest that maybe what we really want is a guy with sufficient individuality to grow a full beard, like Abe Lincoln, who must have started fairly early in his thinking about hair on the face. You will phrdon the hysteria, but I am real upset about this business in Binghamton. My mustache had erditred since I was 19, apart from the few times that a cloudy mirror looped off the adges in such a grotesque fashion, I had to mow the lawn and start the grass all over again. 4 wo op ‘IT SEEMS TO ME if we suspend children from school for encouraging the natural growth of what the good Lord meant to grow on manly faces, the next step is to burn books and decree the constant affection of skirts for young men. I view with alarm; I stand aghast, This has interrupted a political essay on Gen. MacArthur's selection as the loud and resonant voice of the party when the elephants convene in Chicago next month, Suffice that it looks like the Taft end of the Grand Old Party has up and hired the umpire. It may be cricket, but it scarcely seems to be the way we play baseball.

Dishing the Dirt By Marguerite Smith

Q—Should hybrid tea roses be fertilized during summer? I have been told not to. .Carmel. A—This question causes hot argument. But weight of evidence among rose specialists seems to be not to force roses too hard during hot summer months. For they're naturally cool weather flowers. Argument,for fertilizing (1 assume you mean with quick acting chemical fertilizer) is that only new growth produces new flower buds. In our own garden we use bone meal in the fall, plentifully. High phosphate chemical fertilizer in early spring. Then we concentrate on keeping the

Read Marguerite Smith's Garden Column in The Sunday Times

ground moist (not wet) and mulched during the summer with no further fertilizing with quick acting fertilizer. This system produces plentiful flowers and our success in wintering over the bushes has been little short of phenomenal. Especially as_ they don’t usually get much winter protection, Not that I don’t believe in it. But just never get it done on time. I do suspect that zeal or forcing’ bloom during the hot weather roses ike may have something to do with high winter losses, ;

neil posies to_splash against

tthe”

The Indianapolis Times

MRS. DUROCHER—

lee

Lippy's Wife Has B

w 3 a SR

FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 1952

RESEARCH—Her new disc jockey job at Hutton's Manhattan cafe sets Laraine Day Durocher

behind in her reading, including, you'll note, her own book, "A Day With the Giants."

By MARY FRAZER Scripps-Howard Staff Writer

EW YORK, June 13—First thing you notice, stepping into the plush Park Avenue apartment, is the profusion of fresh flowers. Seven bouquets, count ’em. Rich

purple iris to match the huge semi - circular couches.

reuse uphoIS\EEy. df

. roses contrasfing with the furry - gray rug and smooth gray walls and gray, purple-flowered easy chairs. Then wham: : You're struck out by the fact that there's not a sign of baseball in the whole lineup. And this is as strange as a Giants fan asking the way to the Polo Grounds. For the dwelling is that of the eminent Mr. Leo (Lippy) Durocher, and his wife, Laraine Day Durocher, as ardent a fan of the national pastime as ever chomped a hot dog and urged murder of the umpire. » =" ¥

I HAD TO come to chat with Laraine about “Her Day,” with no pun intended anent the author of “A Day With the Giants,” the star of the “Night and Day” radio show, and other “Who's Who” DAY-ta.

Her disc jockeying, TV stanzas, book-writing, home-mak-ing for the volatile Mr. Durocher, and rumored new movie activities, were, I thought, worth a yarn any ... or, day.

But the color-splashed decor gave the interview an extra inning at the outset. So this was Lippy off the digmond. Flowers and frippery.

“Oh, we have plenty of baseball in our California home,” said the truly gorgeous Laraine. Dressed in dazzling green satin knickers, tight fitting at the knee and draped Turkish style about the bustle, with an orchid blouse and gold slippers, she made as pretty a picture as a double play with the bases loaded. “You see, I really have three home plates,” she said. “Our New York apartment. Then our big home, a regular estate, on four acres near Los Angeles. There we have all the cartoons and photos and citations and

mien rr hua “house; wrought iron dining set. Red" fig “spring “training; in g_pent-

tweedy upholstery on the

such, and even a bar made of dihats. And-£or- nearly.

house in Phoenix. ” s s “BUT: IT'S’ HERE in New York that I really have ‘My Day,” she said, maneuvering the talk away from baseball vs. fresh flowers. “I'm up at 10:30 every morning. Which is early, really, since my new disc jockey show at Hutton’s cafe keeps me working from 10:30 p. m. until at least 2:30 a. m. “When Mr. Durocher is in town” (it was “Mr. Durocher” throughout the interview) “He gets up and prepares his own breakfast. And Chris’, too.” Corn flakes and milk are the championship breakfast for the Giants manager and his towheaded, 6-year-old adopted son. “I spend some time house: keeping. “Then, if there is a Giant home game, and that happens 77 times a season, I must be at the Polo Grounds by noon, for our 1:05 p. m. TV show (Double Play—Durocher and Day),” Laraine continued. =» ” ©» “RIDING OUT in the cab I study the commercials. And I usually take a lot of literature along, to bone up for my night show. - You know, biographies of guests I have lined up, editorials and magazine articles so I'll know my politics. “Lunch? Oh, that’s a hot dog and Coke between innings. And OF COURSE I watch the game. I wouldn't dare miss a play. After the game, Leo and Chris and I come home. Chris always goes out with his daddy, puts on a uniform and has a grand time, “His sister, our 8-year-old Michelle, is in schoaql in California, you know. Well, since we just don't have room for a maid in these five rooms, I do all of the cooking.” That, it seems, is a fairly easy chore. “Anything, so long as it's beef,” Laraine said. “Steak one

PLAYTIME—Between TV, radio and baseball chores Laraine

usy Schedule

United Press Telephotos.

finds time to assist 6-year-old Chris Durocher with his model plane

making.

night, roast the next. Add potatoes, chocolate cake and Jello, and the Durocher men are very happy.” ~ » n AT THAT JUNCTURE, young Chris Durocher himself entered from his room. The open door had given me a glimpse of a toy-strewn, all-boy den of durable decor, whose book shelves were dotted with volumes of lives of baseball's great, plus two “Encyclopodia of Baseball” books. The door next led to his parents’ bedroom, all gray, with a great yellow lamp by the twin beds, and two huge blonde chests of drawers against the walls. “Mother, will you help me sand this model plane and what’s the name of this dog,” he said all in one breath.

SPIES, DUPES. AND DIPLOMATS . . . No. 11

Sorge—The Greatest Spy Of Them All

By RALPH DE TOLEDANOQ N the field of Far East policy and diplomatic action, the United States has been misled and misinformed. : Dogmatic innocende #nd duplicity pushed this nation into Far Eastern conflict twice in a dozen years. That some men have planned it so becomes increasingly clear. X Consider Richard Sorge. He was executed (or was he?) by the Japanese government as a

Soviet spy in. November, 1944. Sorge was proud of his Communist record. He fulfilled one of the most fabulously difficult missions in the history of espionage, German born, he worked as a confidant of German Gestapo agents, wormed his vay into the highest councils pf the German embassy in Tokyo.

He discovered in 1941 Japan's most guarded military secret, the time and place of the next onslaught—Pearl Habor, And he had sent this information to - Moscow two months before Japanese planes virtually obliterated the United States Pacific fleet. 3 The Kremlin, which had been given warning by President Roosevelt of Germany's attack on Russia, returned the favor

by keeping this precious military intelligence to itself. = ” NS

IN RICHARD" SORGE'S espionage stable in the Far East there were also Europeans and Americans.

While Sorge busily pumped his agents dry of information, the daily subversive:life of the Communist movement continued in Shanghai. Irene Wiedemeyer's Zietgeist Bookshop, a branch of the International Union of Revolutionary Writers, continued to be the gathering place for Communists and their dupes. Egon Erwin Kisch a Comintern agent, organized the Society of Friends of the Soviet Union, of which Agnes Smedley was an important member. Harold Isaacs was editing the China Forum, attacking the imperialists. Hilaire Noulens was arrested carrying telltale documents, jailed, tried and eventually executed. Isaacs and Smedley were . busy setting up the Noulens Defense Fund, weeping that the spy had been picked up out of the sheer malice of Fascist police. They roped in such innecents as Albert Einstein and Oswald Garrison: Villard-—as well as such people as Theodore Dréifier, Lion - Feuchtwanger, and Mme, Sun Yat-sen—to sponsor this early front.

Max and Grace Granich, two Americans were putting out the Voice of China, poking at authority. They got help from the United States Consul, John Carter Vincent, when Shanghai police tried to shut down their magazine. Molotov’'s brother - in - law, Leon Minster, a Russian-Amer-ican with a United States passport, was running a radio shop as a front for espionage work. ” ~ = SORGE’'S mission had been predicated on the Soviet belief that “events in the Far East

would . cause momentous reverhgrations in the great powers ‘of Europe and the

United States and might bring about a fundamental change in the balance of power.”

In 1945 4. B. Powell and Max Eastman summed this up more clearly by stating that “the fate of the world is at stake in China.” In 1951, Gen. MacArthur jeopardized career and reputation to make this fact clear to a stubborn, politics-rid-den and Red-infiltrated Tru-man-Acheson State Department. Sorge realized the importance of the Far East back in 1930 and Moscow gave him full backing. Sorge was right: He was realistic. The State Department was wrong and bemused. While American diplomatic

officers in China were

to make their energetic apologies for “agrarian

3 oy

“This dog’ we learned, was a gift from a Giants fan, arrived just that day, a canine resembling a coal black mop more than anything else. She's an Affen Pinscher, one of 115 of a toy-strewn, all-boy den of her kind in all the world. And

her name seemed to have escaped everyone. LJ » =»

LARAINE GAVE the dog a piece of dog candy, picked up the toy plane and began sand-

ing it, continuing her conversation. “lI get to Hutton’'s at 10:30 and from then till midnight I interview the ballplayers who come in. You see, the show actually begins at 12. But since ‘the boss’ demands a midnight bed check on his players, they'd better not be out later than

reformers” and “so-called Communists,” Sorge had a clearcut and definite mandate to pry, learn, infiltrate, so that eventually Russia could destroy. -

» u ~ WHEN SORGE was sent by the Kremlin from China to Tokyo, he took with him not only his experience in espionage but a vast interest in the country. He knew that the best spy is often not the craftiest but the most hard-working. Between 1932 and 1935, his mission was more to learn and assimilate than to dig up secret information. It was this Sorge who could write that “it has been my personal desire and delight to learn something about places in which I have found myself . . . I have

, never considered such study

purely as a means to an end; had I lived under peaceful conditions and in a peaceful environment of political development, I should perhaps have been a scholar—certainly not an espionage agent.” . The spy, who drank and fornicated and roistered with his Nazi “colleagues” in Tokvo, who applied all the thoroughness of his German and Marxist background to the task of s y ‘wrote with almost touching enthu of his scholary He wanted it made clear to his “readers” that he was not just a “mailbox” or a cipher in aapyring.

FLOWERY—Busy as a ball player in the ninth ining of a tie game with the bases loaded, Mrs. Durocher nonetheless takes time each day. to deck her Park Avenue apartment with fresh flowers.

E . WAS rather rushed, I'll admit.

tween our World Series—"

/his study of deep political cur- ’ rents are the most alive in the

- nalist since, without it, I would

11:30. So we tape the interviews. Then I mix them in with the live interviews, later.” What, I asked, counting off the 24 hours on my fingers and accounting for practically 25 of them already, do you do abou “special activities”? - “Oh, I manage to squeeze in quite a number of TV guest

show recently. That meant four afternoon rehearsals —and I

“Another book? Maybe. Mr. Durocher was nervous about my first one. But when he read it, he said, ‘That's fine. You got over all the ticklish subjects just fine.’ 2 “Movies? Well, there's no use making a bad picture. I've “made enough of those,” Laraine said with her typical frankness.. “But if I could find just the right script I'd be very interested. It would have to be be-

She broke off with a giggle. = » » “I MEAN, IT WOULD have to be after the season — and let's hope it's OUR World Series games — and before spring training. Dr. Durocher said it would be just fine if I want to make a picture then. He could drop me at the studio on the way to the golf course, and pick me up in the evening.’

Scribbling, “Devoted couple” in my notebook, I asked a final question, “When do you have fun? What's, the Durocher social life?” ; Laraine smiled engagingly and answered: “About the first, I always have fun. I love working. And the second question. Well, we go out early in the evénings, mostly to the movies and especially if there's a Western playing in the neighborhood. Or, if a good friend like Tony Martin is appearing at a night club, we go. “But that's only if the Giants have won. No, not just because Mr. Durocher feels miserable if they've lost. It’s this business of everyone stopping by the table and asking, with a smile, ‘Saaaayyy, what happened????’ “After the twentieth time, that gets monotonous, you know.”

The pages which deal . with

30,000 words he wrote before he was led to the execution chamber. They show Sorge as he might have been had the Soviet virus not seized his system. i His pride as a topnotch foreign correspondent is almost boyish in its frankness: “My research was likewise of importance to my position as a jour-

have found it difficult to rise above the level of the run-of-the-mill German news reporter, which was not particularly high. “It enabled me to gain recognition in Germany as the best reporter in Japan. ; “The Frankfurter Zeitung, for which I worked, often praised me on the ground that my articles elevated its international prestige . . . My journalistic fame brought me innumerable requests for ar ticles from German periodicals, and the Frankfurter Zeitung and the Geopolitik (for which Sorge wrote occasionally) pressed me for a book-on B Japan