Tag Archives: humor

One Way Talker Big Bother

Ring Lardner

Fort Worth Star Telegram/October 6, 1927

Ring is Handicapped in Opener

Hot Dogs Called “Wieners”

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 6—I wish to state at the outset that I watched the first game under a severe handicap. Possibly my more senile readers will recall that amongst those attending the World’s Series of 1921 was a Mrs. Vera Thoke, nicknamed Ducky because her husband was a quack doctor in Enid, Okla. The town of Enid had conducted a popularity contest and the winner was to be sent to the series, which Enid hoped would last a long time. Mrs. Thoke won the contest and was given a ticket to New York, but no ticket to the series. She stood in line in front of a ticket window at Madison Square Garden for three days before she found out that the games were being played at the Polo Grounds. In some way or another she got a hold of my telephone number and from then on she draped herself around me. There was no vacant seat in the press box, so she sat in my lap and I had to read about the game in the papers next day.

Well, when I took my seat this afternoon, a terrible looking woman on my left started a one-way conversation and who should she turn out to be but Mrs. Thokes’ daughter. She said her name was Helma and she had been christened that because it was what she replied every time her mother spoke to her. She did not win any popularity contest, but came to the series as the result of a wager. Last spring she bet with a girl friend that Cleveland would beat out Pittsburgh, thinking they were in the same league. The loser was to ride here on a surf board, rolling a peanut in front of her. Miss Thoke started from Enid in July, when it became evident that Cleveland could never do it, and arrived Wednesday just too late to wash her face and hands before the game began. She had an anonymous letter of introduction to me and was pretty much of a pest all afternoon. If it had not of been for she and the fact that Donie Bush got beat, I would have had a pretty good day.

DIRECTLY behind me was Graham McNamee and his microphone and I could hear every word he said. So it was just like eating your cake and having it. I mean here I was watching a World’s Series ball game and listening to the broadcast of it at one and the same time. You might almost say I attended a double-header, the game Mac was describing and the game I was watching.

I suppose my millions of radio fans will want to know what Mr. MacNamee looks like and I only wished I could tell you. But I can’t. It ain’t because he is indescribable. But I couldn’t turn around on account of a stiff neck which I caught from Wilbert Robinson of the Brooklyn club coming over on the train Monday night. Robbie contracted the ailment during the regular season from looking straight up in the air at his ball club’s line drives The Hotel Schenley was kind of crowded at the noon hour, so I decided to make a lunch of hot dogs at the ball park. I found out that they don’t call them hot dogs here in Pittsburgh. They call them wieners in honor of Lloyd and Paul.

I ran into Dan Howley, manager of the St. Louis Browns. He said he was disappointed in only getting Catcher Manion in the draft. He wanted to get Ed Winn, too, which of rounded out his ball club.

“I had a tough break a while ago,” said Dan. “My team were all at the ball yard when the tornado hit St. Louis and it didn’t kill a one of them.”

Early in the morning a dense fog hung over Pittsburgh and in the afternoon some of the ball players acted like they was still in it. A good many of we experts thought the two clubs wasn’t Pittsburgh and New York at all, but the Phillies and Browns disguised as Lon Chaney.

WAITE HOYT and Ray Kremer seemed to be betting on each other. Both these gents are a whole lot better than they look in this battle. If they ain’t, I am going to take up pitching. I could still continue my art. In fact, pretty near every ball player in this series is experting on the side and at one juncture in the game they asked a 10 minutes recess so as they could refill their fountain pens. Earl Smith complained that it was hard work to typewrite while wearing a mask, protector and shinguards, and Judge Landis has stated that hereafter a stenographer will be permitted to set on the home plate and take the catcher’s dictation.

To add to the confusion, in the excitement of the third inning, Miss  Thoke jumped up on a press table and did a cartwheel. The swish of her skirts blew away the first 6000 wards of Charley Herzog’s story and Charley’s only hope is that it blew them toward Baltimore.

I guess I forgot to mention that Miss Thoke is betting on the Yankees. She has got them mixed up some way with the Notre Dame football team and at frequent intervals all afternoon she would holler “Hurrah for Rockne” and “touchdown, touchdown.”

A remarkable feature of the pastime was the fact that in four different innings it was the Pittsburgh pitcher’s turn to bat first. In the last half of the ninth, some of the fans wanted Donie to send in Cuyler, who has remained on the bench, where he has spent the last two months, because, so rumor bath it, he did not choose to run or slide in 1927.

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Saintly, Generous Ward Green Had Handy Pair of Fists, Too

Westbrook Pegler

Columbus Ledger/January 26, 1956

The death of Ward Greene, the editor and general manager of King Features Syndicate, is a personal disaster to all of who worked with him and of course many others in and out of the newspaper business which he honored and adorned. I have met few persons whom I could sincerely describe as saintly, but this is my opinion of Jimmie Greene and I sure none of our writers, artists, editors, and our girls on the switchboard, will dissent. He was saintly, although he once remarked in his quiet voice, faintly musical with the accent of the South, that he hated church-people in Georgia who used to rush up to him beaming smugly and cry, “Brother, are you a Christian?”

I doubt that he really hated them because hating simply was out of his line. Sweetly generous, indiscriminate kindness was his chief trait. J.D. Gortatowsky, another member of our uptown brass, put it that unwavering loyalty was his strongest spiritual trait. I agree, but I think it is a phase of the whole soul of a man whose like I never have met. He was so generous and fair that not long ago he went after a writer, offering him a contract even though this young man had taken some terrible belts at our concern and some of our executives.

“He has been pretty rough on us,” Jimmie said, “but the kid is a good writer, and he seems to me to have integrity. I am afraid I like him.”

Jimmie — this nickname just happened and was with him from childhood—was spotted as a great novelist in 1929 when his first book, “Cora Potts,” was published and Henry Mencken went into conniptions about a new genius. Cora Potts was a madam. The theme was bold enough by itself but Jimmie’s Cora Potts was an absolute challenge to morals because she was successful and still on the rise, without the slightest indication of retribution, on the last page.

I thought “Death in the Deep South” was Jimmie’s best. It was a fierce, magnificent rebuke to the typical city-side gang of reporters on a “hot” murder story. It was a paraphrase of the tragedy of Leo Frank, a young Atlanta factory executive from the North who was convicted of murdering a young woman, sentenced to hang, commuted to life and, finally, lynched. The description of the heartlessness of reporters, including women, in pursuit of trifles for new leads for new editions and the anguish of the afflicted wife of the man accused took courage because the portrayals were photographic and these were people with whom he had to work day after day.

A few years ago Jimmie did a little sentimental book about a couple of dogs, called “Lady and the Tramp.” It sold well but authors seldom get rich on books, so when Disney made a movie of it I phoned Jimmie from Arizona to congratulate him. He thanked me but said with a dry chuckle, “Only trouble is I sold it outright for very little.”

Later, though, he and Disney got up a comic strip the same theme and Jimmie recently told me this would bring him $20,000 a year as long as he wanted to do it.

As I write this, Gorty phones from Santa Barbara to warn me not to give an impression that Jimmie was sweetly tiresome.

“I never knew any non-professional who had so many fights,” he said. “He never ducked a fight or won one. When Villa raided Columbus, N M., he secretly wired the War Department for credentials as a war correspondent and the message leaked to some of us. So, we sent him a wire to drop everything and hurry to Washington. Jimmie resigned, was about to hop a day coach when we sent him another saying the War Department was advised that he was a drunken bum and therefore withdrew the credentials. Jimmie wound up in a police station, pretty well scuffed up. He hit a cop his first week in New York and Sime Silverman, of Variety, got him out of that one.

“One night in Los Angeles, he took pity on a horrible, low-down bum sleeping in that park across from the Biltmore and, at four in the morning, tried to take his character up to share his room. The house detective stopped them and Jimmie said ‘Why, this is my friend.’ The house dick said, ‘Okay, what is his name?’ Jimmie turned to the bum and said, ‘Friend, what is your name?’ So Jimmie belted the dick and they had to call the night desk at the Examiner to keep him out of jail. He never weighted more than 130 pounds.”

In the office, Jimmie often let the whole staff go at noon on very hot days. If the weather was bad in winter he would close up shop in time for the suburban people to make it home. This earned him the name of Simon Legree.

Four years ago, Jimmie was took real bad but in the last year he gained a little and was enjoying life again with Edith, his wife who had once been his secretary. Her anxiety seemed to be over until he had a heart attack on board the President Polk approaching Havana.

Jimmie was an affectionate friend of Margaret Mitchell, another reporter of his class in Atlanta. After she wrote “Gone With the Wind” he boasted proudly of their friendship. And when I first met Miss Mitchell she spent a good deal of the interview telling me what a great writer he was and of her joy in his success.

A year ago Jimmie was forbidden to drive a car. So he got a de luxe affair and a uniformed chauffeur and he recently remarked to his old friend Gortatowsky: “Gory, I now ride to my office in a limousine with a driver in livery and read my New York Times and take my heart pills. I am a success at last.”

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