Business: Hollywood Puts on a Show

For a change last week the Treasury Department had good news: September war bond sales hit $838,250,000, 20% above August and big enough to top the Treasury’s own quota for the first time. September sales were nearly four times a year ago, pushed post-Pearl Harbor bond sales to more than $7 billion.

Chief reason for the September boom was a whirlwind campaign by the motion-picture industry. Hollywood went bond selling as only Hollywood can—with publicity, stunts, and pretty girls. No. 1 bond-seller was Paramount’s limpid-eyed Dorothy Lamour, who left her sarong in Hollywood and knocked them dead in street clothes. Dotty got off to an early start, has already sold over $30,000,000 in bonds. Another go-getter was Hedy Lamarr, who wangled 225 tired Philadelphia businessmen into buying $4,520,000 in bonds at a single luncheon. But her patriotism has a limit—she cold-shouldered an enthusiastic Chicagoan who wanted to swap a $25,000 bond for a kiss. Pert Frances Dee sold an embroidered negligee for $5,000 in Little Rock, Ark.; Greer Garson persuaded the 23,000 men, women and children in Bluefield, W.Va. to ante $450,000 in a single day. Beamed Treasury Secretary Morgenthau: “An outstanding success.”

But it will not last. Sooner or later, the movie stars will go back to Hollywood, the public will get tired of bond-selling stunts, bond sales will fall. In the year 1942 they will probably be 15-25% below the Treasury’s fond $12-billion hope. And with war costs up to $5.5 billions monthly and still rising, even Henry Morgenthau weakened last month, admitted that to pay for the war and keep inflation under control the U.S. must “supplement the voluntary bond purchase program with . . . forced savings.”