The Press: Wit Fired

Columnist F(ranklin) P(ierce) A(dams)—better known to plain citizens as the beaky, saturnine wit of Information Please—one day last week kept a rendezvous with his boss, New York Post Editor Ted Thackrey, to talk things over. "Well," asked F. P. A., "am I fired?" Editor Thackrey suggested a less callous formulation: F. P. A. might prefer to resign. But F. P. A. preferred to be fired.

Thus jauntily 59-year-old F. P. A. concluded his 38th year of daily columning. He still had something better than a tidy poker allowance from Information Please ($900 a week), but chances appeared slim that he would ever again match his Conning Tower heyday on the old New York World or his $21,852-a-year syndicate column on the Herald Tribune. Less appreciated now are his own Pepys' diary of poker-playing, reading, tennis, his punning and light verse. Real meat of his column was always contributions. In it appeared the early efforts of Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman, Deems Taylor, John O'Hara.

Chicago-born, F. P. A. started out as an insurance salesman, switched to newspapering as a result of selling George Ade a fire insurance policy. F. P. A.'s chief equipment was a knowledge of Gilbert & Sullivan, a ready wit, a talent for drawing out other wits' talents gratis. When the Herald Tribune wanted to cut his pay (1937), he walked out, commenting: "They just wanted me to work for less money, whereas I wanted to work for more."

When a reporter last week asked him what his plans were, F. P. A. replied: "I don't know. What are yours?"