Charles L. Wagner is a U. S. impresario who looks like Jim Farley in a toupee and who long ago exchanged his flat Illinois drawl for rapid-fire Manhattanese. Fifty years ago he gave up collecting celebrities' autographs, began collecting them on contracts instead. Since then Impresario Wagner has barnstormed up & down the U. S. selling such big-time figures as William Jennings Bryan, John McCormack, Galli-Curci. Mary Garden, Walter Gieseking to the public.
Last year, when inconvenient railroad schedules in New England and the South annoyed him no end, Barnstormer Wagner got a new...