Press: Crosby v. Capone

Followers of lovable, philosophical, hell-raising Skippy, comic-strip youngster, are prone to think of his creator as somewhat like Skippy's own comic-strip father. By that token, Cartoonist Percy Leo Crosby might be a tall, gentle, softspoken man with dark hair and a cropped moustache. Readers with that misconception of Cartoonist Crosby took something of a jolt last week when they saw in the New York World a full page of anti-Prohibition tirade headed: "This Space Bought by Percy Crosby Because He Believes That Any Issue, Affecting the Welfare of the Nation, Should Never Be Straddled."' Excerpts:

"Perhaps if some men of this nation did not have columns of jelly in place of backbones, a cartoonist could symbolize

Prohibition, lodged in the Constitution, as a knife in the back of the A. E. F. . . . I say to my fellow members of the American Legion that you cannot salute your flag with a clear conscience until Al Capone is knocked off the throne erected by the Anti-Saloon League. I ... refuse to pay homage to this Chicago monarch. He has neither money enough nor enough lead to make me change my mind. By this plurality of one vote, I make myself the leader opposing the existing gunman autocracy in the United States. . . . [The Anti-Saloon League attempts to justify Prohibition] by preparing an economic report which always fails to include the millions of dollars thrown away on Prohibition enforcement. . . . I say to the Anti-Saloon League . . . there can be no healthy use of the word economics when the women and youth of a country are encouraged to look upon murderers as heroes. When a, nation cheapens its women, that nation is crum bling."

Unlike Skippy's father, Artist Crosby, 39, is minuscule, bellicose. It is legend that half the taxi-drivers and police of Manhattan used to call him by his first name. Last year Artist Crosby bought a full page in the Washington Herald, dealt with Prohibition much as in last week's attack, announced that he had sworn never to drink again "with or without repeal" (TiME, May 26).

Easily could Cartoonist Crosby afford the $1,455 expense of sounding his clarion in the World. Skippy and his colleagues— Cuthbert, Sooky ("Always belittlin' "), Yacob, Aunt Gussie, Uncle Louie (the glassblower)—gather over $100,000 a year for their creator.

Aside from cartooning, Percy Crosby turns his hand to landscapes, etchings, lithographs, water colors. In Manhattan last month was an exhibit and sale of his War sketches for the benefit of the Veterans of the 77th Division.

Blessed Event

Not many years ago, sensational newspapers achieved what was then considered the height of impudence by heralding I he confinements of newsworthy women. STORK HOVERS would be the caption over the photograph of a cinemactor's wife. Seldom were other than stage or him folk and royalty labelled as prospective parents— until about 1927 when Gossip-Colyumist Walter Winchell began to set the pace with preobstetrical reports upon couples in every stratum of society. Last week, as casually as if it were mentioning the departure of a socialite for Palm Beach, Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis' polite New York Evening Post headlined: BIRTH OF TWINS EXPECTED BY MRS. WM. H. VANDERBILT.†