The Press: True, Timely, Virile

In a section headed True Stories, Timely Topics, Virile Features, the New York Evening pornoGraphic published a 20-year-old legend about an obscure singer, Margerita Sylva. The greatest Carmen of them all, the Graphic called Singer Sylva, but this was not the meat of the story. Like nearly everything else in the tabloid the story had to do with matters of sex. Since Singer Sylva’s reputation is comparatively unsmirched, the story’s title was “A CARMEN WHO NEVER Played with Love.”

Searching for pictures to make the story intelligible to the majority of its purchasers, the Graphic rooted out no satisfactory portrait of the Carmen who never played with love. So, not in the least disconcerted, its editors found a picture of another opera star, famed Maria Jeritza, showing her face in an expression of unbridled invitation. The editors published this photograph with the story about Margerita Sylva; there was no caption printed under it; it was not stated that it represented Margerita Sylva. The editors were confident that few Graphic readers would recognize Jeritza, even though similar huge pictures of her had adorned the same page only a few weeks before.