Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [56]
Editor Milburn (“Pete”) Akers is as astute a political writer as you will find in the Midwest. No mere theoretician, he brings a rich background in practical politics to his job as editor and columnist – he served as press officer for Illinois New Deal Governor Henry Horner. Much of the Sun-Times’ current success must be attributed to executive editor Larry S. Fanning, formerly of Collier’s magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle. At the
Chronicle, incidentally, one of Fanning’s reporters was Pierre Salinger, who is now Presidential Press Secretary.
Then there is our managing editor Emmett Dedmon, author of the best-selling Fabulous Chicago and other books; sports editor Dick Hackenberg and his stable of fine writers, which includes Edgar Munzel, Jerry Holtzman, Jack Clarke, the beloved Herb Graffis, and Jack Griffin; and city editor Karin Walsh, who – with reporter Jack McPhaul and the late Jim McGuire – won a Heywood Broun Award for the Joe Majeck story, on which the movie, Call Northside 777, was based.
There are our Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonists, Bill Mauldin, newly arrived from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Jacob Burck, both of whom are generally considered to be among the best ten in their field; political editor John Dreiske, whose abilities are highly respected both at City Hall and down at the State capital; and financial editor Ed Darby, who at one time traveled with President Eisenhower as Time magazine’s White House correspondent. And there is the distinguished Washington staff, headed by handsome Carleton (“Bill”) Kent, former president of the White House Correspondents Association, and including Frederick Kuh, Time magazine’s choice for “Best U. S. Foreign Correspondent of World War II,” and young Thomas Ross, whose string of scoops is the talk of the National Press Club.
There is also a distinguished assemblage of critics: Eleanor (“Doris Arden”) Keen (movies); Glenna Syse (drama); Niemann Fellow Hoke Norris (books); Robert Marsh (music); Paul Molloy (TV); and Jean Neal (fashion). I’m especially proud of Jean, because she learned the newspaper business as my secretary.
And, as fifty million readers in six countries know, there is a syndicated columnist named “Ann Landers.” In private life “Ann” is Mrs. Esther Pauline Lederer. Eppie, as her friends call her, is fully as remarkable as her excellent columns indicate. She never had written a line of copy before she came to Chicago from her home town, Eau Claire, Wisconsin – and that was less than ten years ago! Today she is the most widely read columnist in her field. One of her competitors is a Californian who writes under the pseudonym of “Abigail Van Buren.” In private life, “Abigail” is Eppie’s (or “Ann’s”) twin sister.
Ann Landers is pretty, pert, and sparkling. She not only dispenses sound advice – she lives by it herself. Happily married to Chicago businessman Jules Lederer, she is the mother of a twenty-one-year-old daughter, Margo.
“Ask him if he ever tried jumping into a cement mixer.”
“You ain’t never been a woman at eight o’clock in the morning.”
“Turn off the waterworks, Mama, you’re wasting your natural resources.”
Ben Hecht didn’t write those lines. Nor did Charlie MacArthur nor Bob Casey. Ann Landers did. She is living proof that Chicago is still the world’s liveliest newspaper town – and always will be, as long as there is a corner newsstand.
5. Politicos
It’s a popular pastime, ridiculing Chicago politics. “Like a page out of The Last Hurrah,” the critics like to sneer. “Shot through with fraud!” “Populated by clowns!”
It is true that a look backward does reveal a political past of which no Chicagoan can be especially proud. Many of our mayors were completely corrupt – not servants of the people but slaves of selfish special interests. City councilmen were for sale to the highest bidder, who usually was a vice lord or an unscrupulous businessman. As Al Capone said