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Many times I've been grateful for our North Hollywood A. & P. and the resultant stretched dollar. My family with its three school-aged children eat better and more because of the efficient buying power of the Hartford brothers than they would without them. So I, for one, have my own prejudiced opinion on this decision. . . .
FRANCES PAXTON
Burbank, Calif.
Successor to Jeans?
Sirs:
In the search for a successor to science interpreter Sir James Jeans (TIME, Sept. 30), I should like to call attention to a Russian-born scientist, Dr. George Gamow.
Dr. Gamow [now a U.S. citizen and professor of physics at George Washington University] has worked with Niels Bohr and with Lord Rutherford. One of his books, The Birth and Death of the Sun, deals in layman's language with theories of stellar evolution that interested Jeans, and with the subatomic reactions that are believed to account for the radiation of the stars. In Mr. Tompkins Explores the Atom, he gives a lucid and painless introduction to electrons, positrons, and the other constituents of the atom, not to mention some thermodynamics.
I think that it is up to Dr. Gamow to take Jeans's place and become the interpreter of "the terrifying discoveries of the nuclear physicists."
NORBERT MULLER Berkeley, Calif.
Credit Line
Sirs:
In your review of The Jolson Story (TIME, Oct. 7) you give your readers the impression that someone had an idea for a picture, got a cameraman and a director and some actors and said, "Boys, let's make a picture." You write your review as if The Jolson Story happened; not that someone wrote a screenplay that someone filmed. . . .
You give the impression that Mr. [Sidney]
Skolsky wrote the screenplay. Now Mr. Skolsky, a very fair fellow, at no time wants that kind of credit. Mr. Jolson didn't write it either; the director didn't write it.
. . . Remember a motion picture is only as good as its story and dramatic content. Every producer in town will tell you a director can't shoot a bad script and get a great picture.
STEPHEN LONGSTREET
Beverly Hills, Calif.
-I To Reader Longstreet, who authored The Jolson Story, a belated lifting of TIME'S hat.—ED.
I.N.R.I.
Sirs:
Many thanks for your long review of my King Jesus. I am not perverse; but in view of the Bethlehem massacre and other incidents of the Nativity, I do think it likely that Jesus was telling the truth when he admitted under Pilate's cross-examination that he was "The King of the Jews"—a Roman title, implying legitimate descent from Herod the Great—though at the same time he waived his claim to the vacant throne.
"King of Israel," as King David had been styled, was another title altogether, and that Jesus could claim this too, by matrilineal succession. is suggested by the skeleton coronation story cautiously preserved in St. Luke's Gospel—the lustration. the formula quoted from the ancient coronation hymn: the descent from heaven of the ka, or royal double, in bird form: the vigil on Mount Madara. This ceremony made him titularly "Son of God," rebegotten that day.