Radio: Schmalz

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We, the People, a radio program which sells Sanka Coffee, is anybody's and everybody's soapbox. Since radio's No. 1 schmalz*artist, Phillips Lord (Seth Parker), concocted it more than two years ago, about 1,000 human odds and ends have said their pieces during its half-hour broadcasts. An assorted few: Eleanor Roosevelt, Battling Nelson, Don Budge, Mrs. Dutch Schultz, the postmaster of Santa Claus, Ind., Tom Mooney.

The Tom Mooney night was the most celebrated We, the People ever staged, but a certain Mr. X's six minutes last week provided a new high in schmalz. When tear-jerking Announcer Gabriel Heatter got to Mr. X there was a foggy sob in his voice. "On the afternoon of June 25, 1931," he lamented, "to a hospital in Jackson, Mississippi, police brought a well-dressed man who had collapsed on a city street. . . . Somewhere, somehow the link that bound him to the past had snapped. . . . The man became known as Mr. X and that man stands beside me tonight."

A quavering, crackerish voice took up the tale: "Today I live at the Mississippi State Hospital in Jackson. Doctors there say I am about 70 years old. ... I am almost bald, and what hair I have is grey. ... I am five feet seven inches tall, and weigh 145 Ibs. My doctor believes I was well educated . . . and I am sure I was once familiar with financial statements. . . . I can identify unusual plants by their botanical names. . . . Also I remember the rules of complicated card games like bridge. "Gradually I have recalled several places where I have been. ... I remember best Pensacola, Florida. I remember a man there who took me to the Osceola Club ... My doctors . . . have decided I was there 30 years ago. I remember very distinctly playing cards with some friends, a druggist and his wife. ..."

His voice broke then, but through tears he spoke on: "I am an old man. . . Somehow ... I must find out ... whether I have loved ones who have given me up for dead. ... I do not want to die nameless and alone. . . ."

This week Mr. X was back in the hospital at Jackson, where for almost eight years he has puttered in the greenhouse wintering Jackson folks' plants for small tips, reading geographic magazines, historical novels and the World Almanac. Letters and inquiries by the thousands poured in to We, the People and to the hospital. At least 100 were sure they could identify him. As yet, no one has.

Mr. X's story seemed sound enough, but in its time We, the People has been hoaxed roundly, mostly before Young & Rubican now the producers, set up their elaborate checking system. Scooty was a Scotti dog, wrote a lady from Elgin, Ill., which she had come upon accompanying a tin cripple named Tim, hobbling toward Philadelphia to stay with a hardhearted aunt who didn't like dogs. The woman wrote that she had taken the dog, promising to give him a good home. Now Scooty knew a few tricks, and she was sure the aunt would let tiny Tim take him back if only Scooty could be allowed to bark to Auntie over the radio. This was just the sort of schmalz We, the People wanted, but when the woman arrived, after due publicity she brought no dog. Suspicion was that there had never been one. But the show went on, with a rented dog who yelped convincingly enough when the sound effects man pulled his tail.