Letters, Nov. 8, 1937

(3 of 5)

In the article on double-header movies, p. 28 of TIME, Oct. 18, you fail to mention one all-important detail of Fanchon & Marco's St. Louis poll. Were the audiences polled attending doubleheaders? If so, the fact that there was a 7-to-3 preference for double-features is of little significance—beyond indicating how much the 3-group will take to see the movie it wants.

The point is, one does not take a wet-dry poll in a saloon. Asking double-header patrons if they like doubleheaders amounts to the same thing. In both cases, the sample is biased.

As you might guess, the A. M. D.F. L. of A. has my best wishes.

GARRETT HARDIN

Chicago, Ill.

Reader Hardin's conclusion indeed has merit; the Fanchon & Marco poll was taken only at double-feature theatres.—ED.

Hoag's Feet

Sirs:

With all due regard to your reputation for accurate reporting, I cannot accept without a certain amount of skepticism your statement, in TIME, Oct. 18, to the effect that Yankee Outfielder Myril Hoag performs his baseball chores on feet that would do credit to any 5-ft., 100-lb. toe dancer in Hollywood.

Size 3½ shoes on a husky professional baseballer! It would have been worth the price of a World Series ticket just to see the gentleman mince daintily around the bases. . . .

C. SESSIONS FANT

Macon, Miss.

TIME erred, but the size of Outfielder Hoag's feet is still probably worth the price of at least a League game ticket to Reader Fant. Myril Hoag wears, not size 3½shoes as TIME reported, but size 4 on his right foot, size 4½ on his left. Hoag is 5 ft. 10½in. tall, weighs 175 lb., is famed for his feet, tiniest in the major leagues.—ED.

Gratifying

Sirs:

On p. 69 of LIFE for Oct. 18, I find the following statement: "For the classical learning which has made him a sonorous orator and suave companion of the rich and great, the boss of C. I. O. can thank the course of reading laid out for him by the Iowa school-teacher whom he married at 27."

On p. 19 of TIME for Oct. 18, I find the following quotation from a speech by Mr. Lewis. Speaking of William Green he says, "He becomes inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity."

It is gratifying indeed to note that under the able tutelage of his wife, Mr. Lewis' education has progressed to the point where he is familiar with Messrs Gladstone and Disraeli. I am also sure that he would certainly have given proper credit to the originator of the phrase, instead of palming it off as his own, except for the fact that like myself he cannot remember whether Gladstone said this of Disraeli or vice versa. . . .

THOMAS H. AVERY

Le Roy, N. Y.

During a dinner given on July 27, in celebration of the Anglo-Turkish treaty at Berlin, Benjamin Disraeli characterized William Gladstone, Liberal opponent of the Prime Minister's Eastern policy, as "a sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and glorify himself."—ED. Details

Sirs: