The Press: Postmen Retire

Postmen Retire

From the list of editors printed in the Oct. 5 issue of the Saturday Evening Post, last week in transit to far cities, two names are missing.

The best known name, and therefore the one that will be most consciously missed, is Thomas L. Masson. “Short turns and Encores”-the page where the sedate Post sets out to make its readers laugh-was his department since 1922. Before that, for 29 years, he was Managing Editor of Life. Three dozen years of being professionally funny might be enough for any man. Oldtime Funnyman Masson, 65, explained:

“The severance of editorial connections with the Post was voluntary on both sides. The friendship between Mr. [Editor George Horace]Lorimer and myself remains the same. But my hobby in life now is to become unattached, and I don’t want to be associated with any magazine -in an editorial capacity-again.”

He will, however, continue his weekly radio book-reviews (station WJZ), and his reviews in World’s Work and Christian Herald.

The other man missing from the Post is Frederick Southgate Bigelow, who started with it when Editor Lorimer did 1899. Always in the background, writ editorials which were never signed, thousands of manuscripts, inter hundreds of authors and contributors, he was the stuff whereof great magazines are made, an able, conscientious, modest Associate Editor. Well-heeled with publishing stock which he helped make valuable, Associate Bigelow retires at 58.