The Press: Read Before Printing

Out of the balmy Los Angeles night into the offices of the Times (circ. 496,337) stepped a mysterious visitor. To the man behind the desk he exhibited the engraving of a full-page ad: Would the paper run it in its Christmas issue next day? The visitor produced $2,500 in cash, and the Times took the money and the ad. Soon the visitor's full-page message was rolling by the thousands off the Times's presses. In due course a composing-room hand, routinely checking all ads for typographical errors, came to this one. His eyes widened in disbelief. Not until then did anyone at the Times know what it was printing.

JESUS CHRIST, II APPEARING, heralded the ad in letters two inches high. It went on to explain in the small print that the coming would occur on three successive January days, at three Hollywood churches. The message was signed in a clear, bold hand: Jesus Christ, II.

A frantic order was issued, and the presses were stopped. The ad was yanked and replaced by one from the Barker Bros, furniture store. Timesmen dashed into the night in a desperate and only partly successful effort to retrieve 35,000 copies already distributed. Someone called the churches: they did not know Jesus Christ, II.

Last week the red-faced Times said that its Christmas Eve visitor — who proved to be Thomas Lockyer Graeff, a 30-year-old Angeleno who is petitioning to get his name legally changed to Jesus Christ II —had not come back to reclaim his $2,500.

The competing Los Angeles Examiner (circ. 369,537) said somewhat smugly that the same ad had been brought to its office at about the same time, but some one read it and turned it down.