The Press: Ballyhoo

It took The Literary Digest 30 years to roll up a circulation of 2,000,000 (see below). At the age of six months Ballyhoo reached its astounding peak, 1,900.000. Last week Ballyhoo celebrated its second birthday. Circulation: “about 300,000.” Best evidence that the magazine still makes money is the fact that foxy Publisher George T. Delacorte Jr. continues to publish it. His stable shelters no boarders. Ballyhoo continues the stunt—which it has worn threadbare—of poking fun at advertisers, but in desultory fashion. Now it is largely a funny-picture book, and, if anything, less salacious than at birth. Such paid advertising as it can get, it takes, burlesqued or not. Of the crop of imitators which sprang up during Ballyhoo’s initial success, all but one—”Captain Billy” Fawcett’s Hooey — have disappeared.