The first time I ever saw the illustrious Harold was in Chicago, where he had come to sell his first books. He was a green little country preacher from a “riding” circuit in the Ozark mountains in Arkansas. He was so green that a sure-thing man would have been ashamed to sell him gold bricks. He looked pained when you spoke of writing for money; he said he only wrote to give a message to the world. I saw him again at the Waldorf the other day. He has made a couple of million dollars; got a divorce and a Rolls-Royce and other modern equipment.
In spite of his enormous success as a best seller, I am told that Harold has a canker eating at his heart. He grieves because the literary critics will not take his work seriously, but “kid” him as a “he” Laura Jean Libbey.
The other day, New York was electrified by a story that Hearst had quarreled with Marion Davies and that that attractive young lady was to cease to be a film star in the Hearst studios. But if there was a row, Marion must have won the bout. She is not only still the queen at the studio at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth street, but her brother-in-law has just been placed in supreme command. I am told that everything is getting on with peace and harmony—the kind of peace and harmony where nobody dares to be the first to leave a group and always walks out of the room sideways with his back to the wall.
And now that we are speaking about Hearst—Like all men of brilliant mind, he has his little eccentricities. His is that he never can find his automobile. He owns some twenty cars, but never can find one. He brings his car downtown; forgets it and walks away to the nearest taxicab. The chauffeur waits around until he knows that W. R. is lost again and goes home. Wherefore you invariably encounter Hearst riding around New York in sad and disreputable looking taxicabs. Occasionally, he asks his subordinates if “anybody knows where I left my automobile.” Hearst, however, is a man of penetrating intellect. Don’t let anybody tell you the old yarn about his success being due to his brilliant subordinates. He has a mind that cuts like a slashing knife.
To meet him personally, you would think him the newest and meekest reporter in the Hearst service. He comes into the offices of his hired men with a shy bashful air and usually says, “I hope I am not in the way.” But just let them try to disobey his orders and see how meek he is. Wow!
Our old friend, Wilbur F. Crafts, the reformer, has spent a busy summer in New York. He has been horrified in turn over the Dempsey-Carpentier fight, over the frightful case of some girls who wore one-piece bathing suits at Atlantic City; over some good respectable families who wanted to walk down to the beach in their regular clothes, with their bathing suits underneath and slip off the top layer, thus foiling the bath house robbers. Wilbur also had a spasm of excitement because Tex Rickard had some children from Panama giving some exhibitions of swimming in his big pool in Madison Square Garden.
Some time ago, in a censorship hearing, I actually heard the Rev. Wilbur admit that he was wrong. He had presented a bill he wanted passed, creating a national censorship. One of his friends on the congressional committee raised his eyes humbly to the chandeliers and said he wanted to offer a criticism. Rev. Crafts said he always welcomes honest criticism; he tried to do his humble best, but if wrong, wanted to be corrected; hence he would yield to the congressional gentleman and accept his amendment. The amendment was to boost the salary of the job Rev. Crafts was after from $4,000 to $8,000 a year. He certainly yielded like a Christian martyr.
But about these girls and their one-piece suits that shocked Atlantic City almost beyond human endurance.
Near Atlantic City is a little strip of beach called Somer’s Point. When the police chased the Annette Kellermanns off the beach at Atlantic City, the mayor of Somer’s Point said they could come to his beach, b’ gosh. And so they went—and so the road around Somer’s Point has been blocked all summer—and so Mayor Robert Crissey, who is seventy-two, but has young ideas, is famous. A discreet man is Mayor Crissey, nevertheless.
After the first Sunday of the girl show, he issued a statement in which he said he thought one-piece suits were all right. “And,” he added with a burst of real inspiration, “I am going to buy my wife one just like ’em.”