ODDLY ADDRESSED MAIL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 October 1939, Page 4

ODDLY ADDRESSED MAIL

POSTAL OFFICIALS PUZZLED. Move oddly addressed mail comes to the Hollywood, Burbank and Culver City post offices than reaches any other one community in the United States. Mail clerks assigned to the motion piclure area have become experts in deciphering the intentions of the writers. They read picture writing, names divided between small sketches and few apparently unrelated letters of the alphabet and they know by sight every important motion picture celebrity and can deliver him his mail when nothing more than his clipped likeness is on the front of the envelope. Within the past few weeks many curiously addressed letters, packages and cards have been delivered to the persons for whom they were intended through the Warner Bros, fan mail department, which has long since become as expert as the postal clerks in reading the freak addresses.

One letter had a rough sketch of a chisel, a keg and a human knee. One iong look was enough to let Gale Beatty, the fan mail clerk at Warner Bros., know that the missive was intended for Jimmy Cagney —a jimmy, a keg and a knee. A postcard arrived with a picture of an arrow pasted to the envelope on the left and a small fish fin glued to the right side. That was easy. The letter was for Errol Flynn. Still another envelope carried a sketch of a camel’s hump and of a sign reading "take one.” Next came a clipping from some magazine showing the face of a tramp and a picture of a child’s toy wagon. That was figured out to mean—Humphrey Bogart: “Hump-free-80-cart.” Some of these strange addresses are not easy to describe. One carried a picture of a man cutting at a tree with an axe. followed by a sketch of a small plant and the letters “ert.” That was meant for Hugh (Hew) Herb-ert. Another sketch was of a hand patting a cheek and several rounded hills. That was deciphered as Pat Knowles with little delay. A picture of a young girl and another of a barrel marked "pickles” eventually found its way to Jane Bryan—the girl was a jane, the pickles were the brine. Here is one more that the post office and Warner Bros, fan mail department delivered without delay. A copper penny was glued to the envelope and beyond it was a picture of a weight marked “one ton.” Penny Singleton has it now. More difficulty was found with a letter on which had been drawn what was apparently a small rock upon which the rain was falling. A happy suggestion led to the solution of this. It was meant for Claude (Clod) Rains.