The Press: Full Cycle

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Merlin Hall Aylesworth was a young Colorado lawyer, just three years out of Denver University's law school and 25 years old, when he got his appointment as attorney of Larimer County in 1911. Then his interest began to swing from law, toward business. In 1918 he resigned his post to become vice president of Utah Power & Light Co.

About that time broadcasting put on long pants, became a full-fledged business. When Radio Corp. of America organized National Broadcasting Co. in 1926 to give radio its first coast-to-coast hookup, its directors picked Merlin Aylesworth as NBC's first president.

Radio's Aylesworth held his job for ten years, saw NBC evolve from a thin strand across the continent, linking a few stations, into a powerful network with two transcontinental chains and a host of international ramifications.

Three years ago Broadcaster Aylesworth left NBC, took a new job as president and chairman of Radio-Keith-Orpheum Corp. Then in 1937, having done what he could for R.K.O., Producer Aylesworth gave up cinema, went to work for the management of Scripps-Howard Newspapers. No lover of the New Deal, he suited President Roy Howard's increasing distaste for the Roosevelt Administration. Last year Roy Howard upped Ray Allen Huber, publisher of the New York World-Telegram, made him general manager of Scripps-Howard newspapers and put Merlin Aylesworth in charge of the World-Telegram.

Last week, Lawyer-Utilitarian-Broadcaster-Cinemagnate-Publisher Aylesworth, like the magical Merlin himself, was gone again. He resigned his job on the World-Telegram, and, standing before Justice Francis Martin of the Supreme Court of New York, at 53 was admitted to the bar. His aim: to practice corporation law and specialize in litigation involving labor and taxation disputes.