"Happy Childhood"
Sirs:
TIME, Sept. 10, Miscellany, p. 26—subhead "Happy Childhood'' refers to Mary Belle Spencer Jr. as my "half-naked 14-year-old daughter holding a trophy won in a bathing beauty contest."
I wish to assure the readers of TIME of my children's modesty and ask you to vindicate them by publishing their photograph as proof. . . .
MARY BELLE SPENCER Chicago, Ill.
TIME gladly prints the photograph of Victoria, 12, and Mary Belle Spencer Jr., 14, unrepressed daughters of the crusading Chicago attorney who had Sally Rand arrested for indecent exposure. According to their mother, Daughters Victoria and Mary Belle have never been to school, yet know everything. Once they threw their Christmas tree out the window.—ED.
Slur? Ad? Humor?
Sirs:
The enclosed item appeared in the Boston Herald. Is it a slur, an ad or humor?
BORIS G. ALEXANDER Cambridge. Mass.
TIME accepts as first-rate humor, not without advertising value, the Boston Herald's jibe by able Cartoonist Francis Wellington Dahl. Taking as his text the recent advertisement for TIME Inc.'s new fortnightly, LETTERS, "a publication . . . written by its readers," Cartoonist Dahl shows an earnest little man writing copy, drawing illustrations, setting type, tending press, delivering LETTERS to a house (presumably his own), finally receiving a notice: "Dear Sir—Your subscription has expired—Please send two dollars." But Cartoonist Dahl erred. The yearly subscription for LETTERS, beginning with the Oct. 1 issue, is only 50¢.—ED.
Imitative Advts.
Sirs:
This twice-cover-to-cover TIME-addict sees a possible grave danger in the growing tendency of TIME advertisers to imitate editorial content so cleverly that one must look twice to determine what is news and what is advertising.
First danger, of course, is that news, mistaken for advertising, may be ignored. Second danger is that advertising, mistaken for news, might be overlooked. . . .
One wonders what TIME is coming to, when the Sept. 3 issue includes Zenith's news column about its Mussolini-filtering radio, the Parker House clever news column under "Hotels." Milshire Gin's news column advertising their advertising, and the Heinz TIMEstyle two-column ad. . . .
JESSE GOROV Chicago, Ill.
Sirs:
TIME's drolly flabbergasting captions, oddly arranged sentences, strange, trenchant, startling and vivid epithets—these by association (rather than per se) are endearing to its readers. . . . Such vigorous goings-on, however, premise an affectionate give-&-take which no advertiser even begins to rate.
Consequently when certain advertisers presume to ape, the effect is horrid. Horrid too is the arch way the same gentry bedeck their dry bosoms with TIME's own art-jewelry ("jam-packed," "fortnight ago," etc.) Ugh! It is really too too much. Readers are smitten with nausea, coma; worse, they develop sales-resistance.
CHAS. H. WALKER Willits, Calif.
Sirs: