Gleanings from America

Radio Record, Volume VII, Issue 12, 29 September 1933, Page 12

Gleanings from America

MR. CHARLES FORMEST TALKS ON THIS AND THAT : Zt is. estimated that 25,000,000 ‘people will have. paid te sce the World Fair. before tt closes ai Christmas. The film "Cqvaleade" as- still drawing crowded houses in New York..: _ | Sia to ten pounds is the average cost per head for an evening at one of the more select of New York’s night clubs. Oharles (Buddy) Rogers, formerly a well-known film star, . 4s running @ night club in Chicago. Mr. Forrest was charged 8/for two bottles of ginger ale at this club. Living in America is about twice as dear as in New Zealand. ‘One pound a day is an ordinary charge for @ hotel bedroom and bath-and there are .no meals thrown in. Anybody with a good English voice can get a@ job at an American broadcasting station. Travelling. by aeroplane in America is as cheap as travelling . by train-and about four times as fasi. The train takes 20 hours for the New York-Chicago run, a ’plane 43 hours, .

you know it in New Zealand. Hach city has a community chest-money raised by the citizens very much after the manner of the Mayor’s Relief of Distress Fund in New Zealand cities-and this is practically the only help offered to the unemployed. Bread lines are heart-breaking sights in the big cities, and at night it is nothing to see hundreds of people spending their nights clustered round braziers in the streets, ‘Riding the freights’-creeping above the axles of American trains-is still practiced, but they now have heavy chains which swing out as the train rounds a bend and sweep the ‘passengers’ off the axle box on to the track, and, more often than not, under the wheels. "Wyery one in America is drinking beer, now, and. it’s every bit as strong as the New Zealand beer. It is possible for anybody with a shop or a restaurant to get.a license to sell beer every day of the week, 24 hours of the day.. From August 1 Roosevelt sacked all the enforcement officers, and, although America hasn’t yet got whisky or the ‘hard stuff,’ prohibition is slipping rapidly into the past. In a referundum all the states have ‘gone wet’ by two votes to one. "The big hotels make beer-drinking a sheer pleasurealthough the quaffers of tankards may protest that beerdrinking is a pleasure at any place and any time. The bars in thebig hotels are not on the ground floor, but are after the manner of taverns, usually several floors up. There is music, tables and chairs, a vaudeville act or two -in fact, all the inducements to keep you there spending money. "America has taken to drinking beer in a big wayand it’s having an unfortunate effect on the bootleggers of the ‘hard stuff" When I was in the States about two years ago one would pay from 3/- to 4/- for a ‘spot’ of whisky in a speakeasy. Since beer has become legal the demand for hootles whisky has gone dewn, and one can

buy a ‘spot’? for 1/6. The racketeers are finding business so tough that they are turning to other fields-kid-napping, for instance. ‘Wverywhere I went in America I feund an absorbing interest in things British -New Zealand and Australia are frequently featured in the big city newspapers and the rising prices, of our products are followed with interest. There is absolutely no bad feeling against the HEmpire, but feel'ng is running high against France," "New Zealand and Australia have been getting some a pretty favourable publicity in America in the last month or two-(espite Zane Grey’s na-tion-wide outburst, warning his fellow-citizens that New Zealand doesn’t want Americans and blames the United States for many of her troubles. Jack Lovelock has done more to put this country on the map than al lthe steamship company hooey and publicity agents could accomplish in years. Many of the big newspapers came out with large photographs of the ‘four-lap Phar Lap’ as he was dubbed. ‘The Los Angeles Times’ wrote of him, ‘The crowd rose in unison to its feet to pay tribute to the mightiest miler ever to don a spiked shoe, while Lovelock, showing no stress or strain, jogged an extra lap as his team-mates hammered him on the back and shook his

fiand in glee. This 23-year-old New Zealand boy had wiped out the world record of 4min. 9 1-5sec., made by Jules Ladoumegue at Paris in 1931,’ " Mr. Forrest went on to speak of the system by: which every form of American entertainment is systematised and everyone gets a "rake off."? Supposing a couple of well-to-do Englishmen arrive in New York and put up at one of the more fashionable hotels. They might want to go to a show at night-

they approach the head porter for details. If the gentlemen will take his card, ask for Joe at the theatre and present the card all will be well. Joe proves to be an amiable soul, gives them a couple of drinks in his luxurious office, introduces them to a couple of ermined, be-diamonded damsels and leads the cheery little party of four to a box-and everyone, from the porter to the damsels gets a "rake-off’ for their services. "One of the most talked-of men in’ America," concluded Mr. Forrest, "is Walter Winchell, famous radio sta rand newspaper columnist, who has the reputation of printing the news before it happens. He hears everything, knows everything and, what is more inconvenient, prints everything, One of the first questions when you buy a house in America is ‘Are the doors and windows Winchell-proof? "