Life — August 23, 1928 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

. ities” for it cially aside ome. tably nised those ollow nent ng w thor, Play- write veek, ama, New cago. uns” illed } our ven't re is d in seats ent’s > see tat. THE MAIN STEM Dear Pat WILLARD: I suppose you have a letcl to Leow what your favorite author looks like. 1 refer to the very odd McIntyre, who prob- ably scrivens stuff about the Great Whoopee Way for one of the rags in your town. Don't tell me you've never heard of him because I understand he pens paragraphs about New York for a mess of newspapers all over the world, Frankly, I don’t know Mr. McIntyre personally. I've seen him around, however, and it would be a waste of time to kid him because he twits him- self; that is, he keeps gagging his makeup and his wearing apparel. The only time he made me laugh right out loud, Willard, was when I caught him at an opening night in his bib and tucker. He was all prettied up in his dress suit with the swallow tails and everything, and right then and there I was convinced that he came from Plattsburg, which is in Missouri some place. He has plenty of white hair and his cheeks are sunken, which probably came from listening to i» people who told him stuff that he had used before. But I like his column and his code. He | | appears to be a regular guy, which is all that really matters, anyway. The only time I foam at the mouth is when he takes us New Yorkers across his good knee and gives us a piece of his mind. You know what I mean, Willard. We are all alike. All of us ask for a candid criticism about ourselves and when we get it we squawk our heads off. But McIntyre seems just as sensitive. Right now he is hammering away at Franklin P. Adams, who also columns in New York, because Adams yipped at him for using “like” as 2 conjunction. Adams is incessantly kid- ding writers about their grammar, but Oscar, which is MclIntyre’s front tag, is the only one who ever pouted out loud in the paper about it. He argued that Shakespeare used “like” as a conjunction and then sat back relieved. I do know this about McIntyre, at any — — = Cowsoy (just in from the range): Yip, yip, yip, whoopee! ! Eastern Tourist: Gracious, aren't these natives quick at picking up the latest thing on Broadway! rate. I know that he has been peddling chatter about New York for a dozen years or more and is carning about $1500 every week from his syndicated stuff alone. He writes for more magazines than anyone I know of and his other achievement is his beautiful wife, who is always with him. Yet he will tell you that he can re- member when he used to cut his own hair because the breaks were not so good and that his struggle for recognition was tougher than Tom Hee-heeney’s jaw. It is only in the last year or so that he “made” the town he has been writing about. It appears that he could never con- vince the Gotham editors of the value of such a depart- ment. In the mean- time an army of up- starts landed jobs on the Metropolitan rags doing the same thing, and the Hearst papers had to go to their strongest competitor, the McNaught Syndicate, to hire him, because the Broadway and New York stuff had become a vogue. And he is the only columnist with a monument already erected for him. The home in which he was born in Plattsburg still stands and the Chamber of Com- merce has tacked up a tablet calling atten- tion to the fact, which must give him a bigger kick than Tex Rickard put up about the radio ruining his gate receipts. There isn’t much else stirring. “Angela Mia” is a pretty ditty and for a wallop- ing march ask your phonograph merchant for a record of “We Are the Musketeers,” from Ziegfeld’s “Three Musketeers” show. And for the latest poker slang, “The Dolly Sisters means a pair of Queens. wbtart, Schaffner and Marx” means three Kings. “Texas Guinan’s” is a Full House. “The Shuberts’ means a pair of Jacks....and a straight flush is a rush of blood to the head. Oh, yes, and the current Scotch gag concerns the Aber- donian who almost murdered his wife when he caught her rinsing out his shav- ing brush. Walter Winchell. NO INCENTIVE Mrs. Tippens: Why doesn’t Esther come to our mothers’ meetings any more? Mrs. Lampem: Oh, didn’t you know that she has had a baby? Se” “Hey, Dad, make it whistle when my train foes around a curve, will yuh?” comicbooks.com