The Press: Who's Who's Who

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Even if the biographee objects to being listed, he is carried if he is important enough. Every biographee supplies his own listing on a form sent out by Who's Who, except in special cases. (Stalin's biography was sent by the Russian embassy in Washington.) Dwight Eisenhower, when he was commander at NATO, noticed that his listing had grown longer and longer as he acquired new honors, pared it down to 24 lines. Former President Harry S. Truman (25 lines) argued that his middle initial should be followed by a period, even though the initial stood for nothing, but in the current issue the period was dropped anyway. Longest entry in the book: International Business Machine Board Chairman Thomas Watson (181 lines).

Who Was Who. Names are dropped much more readily than they are added. Writers who turn out one important book and then fade out quickly join the "noncurrent" (i.e., dropped)' list. Death or conviction for a crime are automatic reasons for dropping a name, although after death the name may turn up in Who Was Who. Alger Hiss went out after he was convicted of perjury. German-American Bundsman Fritz Kuhn as well as Communist Boss William Z. Foster were knocked out for being too "notorious." No sports figures were included until 1943, when the rule was changed. Among the sports figures that Who's Who has listed: West Point's Football Coach Earl Blaik, Gene Tunney and Bobby Jones. In the 1952-53 edition Editor Sammons himself was dropped as an office joke perpetrated by his daughter, but he is back in the new edition.

The Sammons family also puts out Who Knows−And What, Who's Who in Commerce and Industry and several other similar books in which names often go that do not make the parent edition. For imitators who pirate his list for other books, Editor Sammons has devised a neat trap. Under every alphabetical division, he has a "burglar alarm," a fake listing of a nonexistent person with an address that leads right back to Who's Who's door. Pirates trapped last year: two.