The Press: Onward & Rightward

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Fleet Streeters last week were chattering like a treeful of English sparrows over the supersuccess story of a bird they all knew when. Only eight months ago brash Frank Owen, back from the wars, had gone to work as a high-priced (around $40,000 a year), once-a-week columnist for Lord & Lady Rothermere's London Daily Mail. Now he had been named its editor.

The Rothermeres' diehard Tory friends had for years spoken of Owen as "that notorious leftist." They could only hope that Esmond and Ann Rothermere knew what they were doing. At least, the Rothermeres knew what they wanted: more zip and more readers for the Daily Mail (now 1,900,000), which has lagged far behind Beaverbrook's giant Express (3,700,000) and the tabloid, Labor-loving Mirror (3,400,000) since the Government took the lid off circulations. Hard-handsome, hard-talking, hard-drinking Frank Owen, once an eager Beaver-boy himself, seemed the man for the job.

Shocking Pink. The aging Welsh wonder-boy of British journalism was as giftedly gabby as ever but no longer so leftish. At 23, as political mascot to Old Liberal Lloyd George, Owen had been Parliament's youngest member. At 32, he had left the Express to become the Socialist editor of Imperialist Beaverbrook's Evening Standard (the Beaver did not forbid dissenting opinions, but only dull ones, from such bright-pink young men as Owen and his successor Michael Foot). On the Standard, Owen had tramped hard on Tory toes, squawked against Chamberlain's appeasers.

During the war (he was abruptly drafted in 1942 while beating the drum for a second front) Owen served as pressagent to his old friend Mountbatten. He edited the cheesecake-laden SEAC in Lord Louis' South East Asia Command, wore a Monty-style beret but never the insignia of his rank (lieutenant colonel). When he came home last summer, he no longer seemed so positive that Socialism had all the answers. His "Good Morning!" column in the Daily Mail didn't exactly hew to the Tory line, but it sometimes took a micrometer to measure the difference.

Recently, while the Mail's burly, quietly competent Editor Stanley Horniblow visited the U.S., Frank Owen had filled in as editor. Last week, hungry for more travel, Horniblow quit (his long-term contract had reportedly been bought up for £17,000). The day Horniblow left, he and Owen walked out of the office arm in arm to get a drink.

Through the Mirror. Mailmen gossiped that Owen's promotion was plotted by Ann Rothermere, who, keeps a bright and calculating eye on her easygoing husband's affairs. The Rothermeres had paved the way for the change by a complicated bit of high finance. They spent some $3,000,000 to clinch their shaky hold on the Mail by buying out the shares held by London's tabloid Mirror, and trading off their own shares in the Mirror.*