PERSONNEL: New Faces

¶ Howard Joseph Morgens, 46, will succeed Neil McElroy, 52, as president of Procter & Gamble when McElroy becomes Secretary of Defense Oct. 1. Mc-Elroy’s longtime protégé, St. Louis-born Soapmaker Morgens graduated from Washington University (’31) and Harvard Business School (’33), first went to work as a $150-a-month store-to-store salesman for Procter & Gamble in Kansas City, trying to interest people in soap in a Depression year when many could barely buy food. He did so well that P. & G. sent him on a cross-country tour. After six months of driving up and down country roads, Morgens reported to his surprised bosses that their first job was to sell people on cleanliness, then soap. Morgens set up the company’s first inside copy section to get away from flossy ads, keep themes basic; in 1942 was put in charge of all advertising. A vice president since 1948, he gets a big share of the credit for putting over Tide (“Gets clothes cleaner than any soap—any soap”), the first successful all-purpose detergent. Yet Morgens denies he ever authored an original P. & G. idea, claims “everything we do is created, adjusted and tested” by his “team.” ¶ Dr. Wilbur G. Malcolm, 55, a bacteriologist turned business executive, will take over as president and chief executive of American Cyanamid Co., the nation’s seventh largest chemical company (1956 sales: $500 million), succeeding Kenneth C. Towe, 64, who moves up to the newly created position of board chairman. Born in Moscow Mills, Md., Malcolm astonished his family by shooting up to 6 ft. 3 in. in his early teens, earning the lifelong nickname “Weed,” whizzed through the University of Maryland to a doctor’s degree in bacteriology. After a stint as senior bacteriologist at Massachusetts’ state antitoxin laboratory, he went to Cyanamid’s Lederle Laboratories in 1934, three years later gave the company a major breakthrough by developing a fast, inexpensive way of growing anti-pneumonia serum in rabbits instead of horses. By the time he was 36, Malcolm was Lederle’s research director. Since 1955, he has been boss of all sales and market development for Cyanamid’s chain of 40 plants producing a widely diversified line of 6,000 products. ¶ James O. Plinton, World War II ferry pilot and flight instructor of the wartime 99th Fighter Squadron (all Negro) at Tuskegee, Ala., became executive assistant to the director of personnel and industrial relations of Trans World Airlines—one of the few Negroes in an executive capacity in a major U.S. airline. Though T.W.A. had no comment, insiders say that Airman Plinton will help lay the groundwork for T.W.A.’s first Negro pilots under an industry agreement last year (TIME, Oct. 15) to eliminate discrimination in hiring flight personnel.