Press: Hectic Herex

In Chicago one day last May, a short, round-stomached figure stepped from a Lincoln limousine bearing New York license NY, walked importantly into the offices of William Randolph Hearst’s Herald & Examiner. Soon he wrote a letter to each & every Herex reporter which started: Gentlemen—These are hard times. . . .

Thus began the economy campaign of Managing Editor Victor Watson, fresh from the Hearstian New York American.

He slashed newshawks’ out-of-town food & tipping allowances to $3 a day, directed them to ride in daycoaches in the daytime.

He combined the art and photographic departments of Herex (morning) and the allied American (evening). He installed four city editors in rapid succession.

Quietly, without the fanfare the Herex employs when acquiring a new Name on the staff,* familiar figures began disappearing from the Herex offices. Chatty Mrs. James Hamilton Lewis, who wrote a Sunday gossip colyum. went to join her pink-whiskered Senator husband abroad.

Roscoe (“Duffy”) Cornell, who had worked for Publisher Hearst for 30 years as city editor, night managing editor, circulation director, drifted West when his contract was not renewed. Musicritic Glenn Dillard Gunn announced that he was “open to offers.” Last week came Columnist Ashton Stevens’ turn, and a showdown.

Ashton Stevens was a special case. More than half of his 60 years have been spent in the service of Publisher Hearst, whom he once taught to play the banjo. He started criticizing drama on the San Francisco Examiner the year before Publisher Hearst’s Spanish-American War. After a spell in New York, he went to the Herex in 1910. His first-row aisle seat at Chicago play openings became a fixture. It pleased him to know and write about people like Minnie Maddern Fiske, De Wolf Hopper, the Barrymores. When there was no play to write about, as frequently occurs in Chicago, he buttoned on his light spats, picked up his stick, tapped on a grey fedora and went about to dig up material for his daily column. In 1926 his first wife. Novelist Gertrude Atherton’s sister Aleece Ulhorn, died. Next year he married youthful Florence Katherine Krug of Chicago’s semiprofessional Goodman Theatre, began mentioning “the young lady who looks over my shoulder” in his articles.

Columnist Stevens and Editor Watson did not take to each other. When Mr. Stevens objected to the loss of his usual space on the first page of the second section, the editor fired” him. Mr. Stevens wired Mr. Hearst. Mr. Hearst reinstated him. Then Mr. Watson got Mr. Hearst to issue an order directing that the Herex publish no more columns. Last week, when his contract expired, Columnist Stevens left, went to Manhattan to look for a job. Red-haired Cinema Critic Carol Frink, onetime wife of Playwright Charles MacArthur, became the Herex theatre reviewer.

With the hectic Herex’s staff ructions thus temporarily settled, reports began cropping up that the Chicago Hearstpapers were about to consolidate into a single all-day journal. This was promptly denied. It was pointed out that Mr. Hearst personally owns the unhealthy Herex, while 35,000 stockholders of Hearst Consolidated Publications, Inc. control the profitable American.

*With customary reclame, last week Herex announced that Betty Sturgis Field, cousin of playwright Preston Sturgis, wife of Henry Field (archaeologist of the Field Museum, nephew of Capitalist Stanley Field), would henceforth conduct “The Social Whirl” for the paper.