Show Business: Drums in Old Mizzou

Faintly but distinctly, the mesmeric boomlay-boom of publicity drums on Manhattan’s Madison Ave. is heard 980 miles away in Columbia (pop. 43,000), site of the University of Missouri. Stout-souled citizens wonder what is wrong. Chamber of Commerce members writhe to the beat and get the message. It is so nonsensical that at first it seems to be garbled: name the new boulevard (boom-lay boom) after Milton Caniff.

As the tattoo continues, familiar information floods the C. of C.: Milton Caniff is a cartoonist who draws a comic strip about Steve Canyon, a tall, blond, slightly stuffy Air Force aviator. Steve and his buddies will be portrayed in a new show on NBC television this fall. Best of all (boomlay, boomlay, boom) there is a local tie-in: Miss Columbia Mizzou, raffish blonde who shows up intermittently in the strip, is named after the University of Missouri, near which, in Caniff’s fable, she once slung hash.

Miss Mizzou, who always wears a trench coat but (it is rumored) nothing underneath, appears to decide matters for the Chamber of Commerce. At a city council meeting the C. of C. suggests, and the council approves, that the new $1,500,000 road connecting U.S. Highway 40 and the university stadium be named after Caniff, who is not an alumnus or even a Missourian (he was born in Hillsboro, Ohio). It is further decided that large cutouts of Miss Mizzou, dimpled knee poking through her trench coat, shall mark Caniff Boulevard.

Because only about half of Columbia is numbed by the drumming, a furious row commences. The city’s ladies fume about Miss Mizzou’s putative lack of underclothes, while the C. of C. retorts that nothing has ever been proved in that respect. To critics who question the whole project, the C. of C. men reply that it has great publicity value but give no clear notion of what the publicity is for or what they are selling. The city council hears more arguments, schedules a final meeting for next week to decide whether Missouri’s teams will ride to glory past pinups of Caniff’s (and NBC’s) camp follower. Boomlay boom.