The Press: New Cleveland Magazine

Unless it be the backstage of the Woodlawn Neighborhood Playhouse an hour before the opening curtain of The TorchBearers, there is no scene of such dithering excitement as the office of a brand new magazine about to be published by amateurs. The A. S. Gilman Printing Co. of Cleveland gyrated last week when a group of smart young people of the town brought forth the first issue of Parade, a “social, semi-humorous and pictorial” weekly.

But in Parade, Clevelanders found no puerile product of juveniles writing about their friends, but a trim, well-mounted magazine which came creditably close to its aim: a smartchart for Cleveland.

In vitality of photograph it easily equaled Town & Country. Text and drawing exhibited well the New Yorker technique but missed the master’s polished cough and sigh. Only false note was a great photograph of, and leading article by, Randolph Churchill, jejune son of Winston, whose relation to Cleveland, if any, was nowhere explained. After that each page went well until the last which consisted of leering, Winchellesque questions without printed answers, e. g.: “Who is the minister who has the most complete collection of pornography in the city?” “Who is the financial power whose wife remarked when a maid complained of the master’s attentions: ‘Isn’t that splendid! Between us both possibly we can keep him at home for a few evenings of the week,'” etc.

The Birth of Parade was the big moment in the youthful career of W. Holden White, 25, publisher and chairman of the board, and his good friend Winsor B. French, 25, cofounders. Publisher White is the polo-playing scion of the family which founded The White Co. Director French is a vivacious adman, versifier, socialite. For excellence of photography and art, credit is given to a young Clevelander, Jerome Brainerd Zerbe Jr., himself an able sketcher.