1935
Ah, Novemberl Crisp mornings with crystal frost on the yellow grass. Clear, star-lit nights. Breath blowing before you in a cloud of steam. A comfortable fireplace with the glow of dying coals reflected across the sparkscorched rug. A tall glass of foaming ale splashed over your best necktie. And that's about all I have to write about this month. My mailbag is as empty as a school on Saturday.
By now you have all received the class questionnaire. I hope you have all answered its pertinent and impertinent questions and sent it merrily on its way to Hanover. In another month or so we hope to start using some of the vital statistics in this column. Brother Kugler, arch-rival in the editorial field, responded promptly and impudently as is his wont. "I don't know why I should release this information to you of all people. It's just a trick to get stuff for your old column, that's all and nobody reads it any more. The Tear-Bag has you on the run, sonny boy. Watch for a three-page questionnaire in the next Bag! You can't out-class me!" What is this rag you are talking about, Bobby boy? My postman hasn't struggled under a Tear-Bag for four months. Editor trouble?
From the column "Broadway Footlights": Last June, down in Princeton at the McCarter Theater, Harold Kennedy, actor and playwright, a graduate of both Dartmouth and the Yale Dramatic Workshop, inaugurated what he called the "Princeton Dramatic Festival," a ten-week session in which various stage luminaries headed a series of revivals of popular comedies. As a final touch, Kennedy put on a play he himself had written, called "Horace." (Anti-climax. No comment on the show.)
Nichols Junior College, located outside of Boston, has added Jim LeSure to its staff as an instructor in English. After Dartmouth, Jim went on to graduate from New York University and Fordham Law School.
A letter from Gould Griffith up in Bennington, Vermont: "My charming Irish wife, Sheila, whom I married in Belfast on November 6, 1945, presented me with a son on May 23 of this year. His name is Barry Edward. Not only has he a father, a grandfather and an uncle who are Dartmouth alumni, but the doctor who delivered him was one, too. We should have called him Eleazar."
Biography-of-the-month (Condensed from Advertising and Selling):
Tom Lane, Director of Advertising and Sales Promotion for the Rexal Drug Company, is today holding down one of the largest advertising jobs in the country. Tom has reached this niche after following an Horatio Alger-like series of steps which began with his editorship of the Daily Dartmouth. After graduation Tom covered a city-staff beat for the New York Herald-Tribune long enough to get slugged by pickets during a building strike, and to meet a sister newspaperwoman, who is now Mrs. Lane and the mother of two little Lanes. He left the Trib to join radio station WOR, New York, as a publicity man and six months later moved over to the advertising agency of Young & Rubicam to publicize some of their top radio shows. He nurtured the Jack Benny-Fred Allen feud, fed the legend of Kate Smith's Americanism, and exploited the weird characters appearing on "We, The People."
His next step up was to a job as producerwriter for Y&R's radio department where he spent several years gaining valuable knowledge of radio from the point of view of the man in the control room and at the typewriter. But Tom figured he ought to know something about writing copy and, since the copy department couldn't afford to pay him what he was making in radio, he spent six months writing ads at home nights and putting them through the mill for acceptance or rejection. So many were used verbatim that the copy department eventually hired him away from the radio department. His first assignment was a honey—writing Pall Mall copy for the late George Washington Hill. He continued with campaigns for Arrow Shirts, Borden's, American Can and Gulf Oil until the "March of Time" was resurrected, and the agency figured he had the background to be its Account Executive. By the time the war came along he was handling the General Foods account. But Washington was calling. The Treasury needed the loan of a top-notch advertising man to help get its war bond drives going and Tom Lane was sent down for "sixty days." He stayed four years and became the key figure in almost 1400,000,000 worth of advertising devoted to war bonds in all media, at no space or time cost to the taxpayer. By war's end, the National Public Relations Association cited him, along with Elmer Davis and Paul Garrett, for doing the best job of wartime public relations.
When Justin Dart, new President of Rexall Drug, was scouting for someone to head up his expanded post-war advertising program, Tom's name was suggested. Dart heard him make a war-bond talk before the Boston Advertising Club and promptly signed him up. And that's all there is to it, gentlemen.
Tom now lives in Brentwood, a suburb of Los Angeles, and when not working at the Drug business, he spends his time woodworking or playing tennis or thinking about working at the Drug business.
News that Naramore collected here and there during his belaboring of the Green Derby: A note from Charlie Lebeaux in Detroit: "I have a cute little kid, Daniel, born January 29th, 1947. Looks like me, too." From George Dole, who is with Moore and Dole in Paris, Illinois: "On May 11, 1940, I married Dorothy Ann Thomas and have now been in the happy state of matrimony long enough to warrant the arrival of Betsy, 4, and Pete, 2. I entered the F.8.1, as a special agent in May 1940 and served until April, 1946, when I returned to my home town of Paris to re-enter the practise of law." And a final quote from Charlie Tobey: "My departure in 1932 from the green campus of Hanover was not due to any scholastic deficiency, but came from an opportunity to be secretary in my father's of- fice in the U. S. House of Representatives and later in the Senate, and to continue pre-law studies at the George Washington University night classes. In Washington I met and mar- ried one Ruth Thompson Murray who has since turned Yankee, and who heads our fam- ily of us and Joan and Richie, now six and four."
Joe Waters of Mt. Vernon went off on a business trip last June, met a girl, married her, and turned the business trip into a honeymoon. A couple of days later he called up his father long distance and said, "Here, talk to your new daughter-in-law." No point in fooling around with long engagements I always say.
Mac McCarty, member of the Board of Governors of the Dartmouth College Club of New York, is also editor of the "Club News." Swamped with work putting out the 6" x 8" monthly and running a crew of dirigibles all over the country at the same time, he employed, at no salary, Bud Fraser as business manager. So an old '35 team is back in the publishing game. You remember that Mac had an editing share of the Daily Dartmouth and Bud, a managing piece of the Jack-O-Lantern, twelve years ago.
Don't forget to stop in at the New York Class dinners when you're in town. Schedule was in the October issue. That's all, brother.
Secretary, Compton Advertising, Inc. 630 5th Ave., New York 20, N. Y.
Treasurer, 1001 North Eye St., Tacoma, Wash.
