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Bathtubs and Singing Dogs. Last week a reader of the Post could have learned that "Sears, Roebuck Heir Bob Rose will shoot only the greater kudu, sable antelope and mayala" in Mozambique (Doris Lilly), that "climbing, running and jumping in improper or outgrown shoes can do serious damage" (Josephine Lowman's "Why Grow Old?"), that ex-Blonde English Actress Barbara Steel's dark hair is nearer to her true hair color (Sidney Skolsky), or even, in the lead of Eleanor Roosevelt's column, that "We have just celebrated the Fourth of July." The Journal-American was busy informing its readers that "Brett Halsey hasn't heard a thing from his estranged wife, Luciana Paluzzi, since she sent him a terse cable informing him that she had a baby boy in Rome" (Louella Parsons), that "when enameled bathtubs and lavatories become yellow, rub with a solution of salt and turpentine to restore the whiteness" (Bert Bacharach), and, in a quick switch to weightier matters, that the Dominican Republic under Trujillo "was the best country on earth from the standpoint of the practical well-being of the people" (Westbrook Pegler). The Telly turned its attention (for 21 column inches) to a man in Greenwich Village who had just acquired a 1936 Dodge, reported that "that was indeed Joe Wade you saw bicycling along the Montauk Highway toward Southampton the other day" (Joseph X. Dever), and assured its readers that it is indeed possible for a dog to sing along with Mitch Miller (in answer to a query to Ann Landers).
Cussed Commuter. These confections are only lightly dusted with news—a fair share of it borrowed. "The afternoon papers," says Post Columnist Murray Kempton, "are only poor morning papers delivered in the afternoon. Every afternoon paper in New York is written out of the Times and the News—though they do pick up slightly as the day goes on." Now and then, one of the evening dailies bestirs itself to launch a crusade, e.g., the World-Telegram's recent series on slum landlords and university-student cheating. But such enterprise is rare. More characteristic is the Post's current serialization of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe's famed igth century sermon on the evils of segregation. When Publisher Schiff proposed this Civil War Centennial treat for Post readers, Editor James Wechsler was ecstatic. "Why," said Wechsler, "Uncle Tom emerges as a prototype of Martin Luther King!"
The afternoon papers complain of invincible distribution problems (their delivery trucks must roll during rush-hour traffic), of bad time breaks at deadline, of stern suburban competition (41 afternoon suburban dailies in the New York area against only twelve morning suburbans), and of the sheer cussedness of the New York commuter. Says the World-Telegram's Managing Editor Wesley First peevishly: "If people read the morning papers going to work in the morning, why don't they all read afternoon papers on the way home?"*