If a white elephant, adorned with tar and talcum powder, strolled down Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, at 12 noon, trailing behind her a train of toy trolley cars, each painted, in large letters, with the name of that excellent hostelry, The Hotel Roosevelt, what would this be? It would be a publicity stunt. What would a hardboiled, wise, cynical, alert newspaper reporter think it was? He would think it was a front-page story. This, at least, was the opinion which intelligent persons were compelled to adopt after witnessing last week in Manhattan an example of journalistic susceptibility to unoriginal press-agenting.
There was an acrobatic dancer, one Mlle. Simone Roseray, who performed adequately enough, in a Manhattan night club. The press-agent for this night club, one Irving Strouse, cudgeled his wits to think of some smart dodge whereby he could place Mlle. Roseray and the club in which she performed, more conspicuously before the public eye than either had ever been before. With elaborate cunning, he constructed his plan. Mlle. Roseray would go into Central Park and give an imitation of a woman trying, not very hard, to commit suicide; she would be rescued by sensation seekers who, with shouts and squealings, might decoy a few newshawks to the scene of action. Newshawks would then fly to the home of Mlle. Roseray; there they would find a note addressed to the proprietor of her night club, a suicide note, of which this was to be the purport: "Because, you see, I love you." In the meantime, the rescued lady would be taken to a hospital, examined by a physician and let loose to an admiring world. After a day or two, there could be an advertisement in the papers saying: "Mlle. Roseray, now completely recovered from her recent indisposition, is dancing nightly. ..."
All happened as arranged. At an early hour on Sunday morning, just late enough to miss the Sunday morning papers and in time to give the reporters a full day to write a florid account of the event for Monday's packets, Mlle. Roseray waded into a small and shallow Central Park pond, splashed. A man dashed, fully garbed, toward the floundering female, who struggled away from him through the broken ice. "Mister, Mister, let me alone," she cried, but eventually permitted herself to be taken to the Lexington Avenue Hospital. Here, Mlle. Roseray was treated by a Dr. Martin J. Blank, who, despite his name, was no party to the plot; the man was put to bed so as to recover from a severe chill.
But were the reporters, when they arrived, as stupid as Press-agent Strouse had fondly hoped? They were, with one exception, more stupid. Forgetting that the most obvious moment for such a publicity stunt was precisely the moment at which it had occurred, they sleepily made up their minds that no one who did not really want to drown would have chosen such a time for submergence. They discovered a photograph of a man, across which was scribbled an illegible endearment, in Mlle. Roseray's handbag; but no clue was offered when they perceived that the image was that of the proprietor of her night club. The Lexington Avenue Hospital refused to inform them as to whether Mlle. Roseray would recover, or how soon. These details the reporters were compelled to invent.