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With increased advertising in view, Zit often ventures the role of impresario, claims to have "discovered" Sophie Tucker, Belle Baker, Eva Tanguay. He also writes songs. Extravagantly he boasts that "more individuals in the amusement field owe their present positions to ZIT than to any other single agency."
The "rottenest break" of his career, says Zit, occurred last year. A rich syndicate had offered him $4,000,000 commission if he could persuade Showman Erlanger to sell his theatrical enterprises. Erlanger refused because he "couldn't live if he gave up his business"—and died ten months later.
Another "personal" publication appeared last week in The New Broadway Brevities, a monthly edited by Stephen G. Clow who once styled himself "the most famous and wicked blackmailer in world history." In 1919 Editor Clow acquired the weekly Broadway Brevities, made $150,000 from it in six years, went to Atlanta Penitentiary for blackmail. Emerging penniless in 1928, Clow wrote his "confessions" for King Features Syndicate. Of him Variety's Editor Sime Silverman said: "After Clow had been used by hundreds on Times Square to settle their personal hatreds, they stood by and allowed him to be stuck up against a wall to be shot." In his new venture, backed by Wall Streeters, Editor Clow makes no apology, no reference to his book's notorious predecessor. The first issue is a potpourri of Broadway gossip, interspersed by smoking-car humor.