Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 5, 1938)
From where I SIT By CLARE TGOE One of the most vicious of that peculiarly vicious specie of cinema offering, the “college” show, is now reeling out its undis tinguished existence at the Heilig theater (no plug). “Start Cheei ing,” stairing (?) Jimmy Durante, Walter Connolly, pretty, in , ;ipid Joan Pei ry and pretty-boy Charles Starrett is another of those shows—you realize it with a groan of misery when the student express rounds the curve bent for dear old Midland, with the cars full of jolly boys and girls all singing “We’re on Our ,W'ay to College.” All are decked out in sweaters with huge blazoned on the front, even the girls, who wear coy white numbers with an «'M” on the shoulder. College atmosphere oozes from every reel. And our hero, who '».! a matinee idol with a yen for eddication (he has selected Mid land as a place to get it) bursts upon the scene in a raccoon ccat and feather-trimmed hat. Of course he gets the collective bud ft-am the students for wearing it. and Miss Perry, who is as good fi~ she is beautiful, simpers that the outfit went out with the clas.^ of 1929, whereupon our hero doffs it wdth relief. He might as well have worn it, however, for everything about the production was as phony as the raccoon coat. The glee club was always on the spot to “swing” the feature numbers. The lads ,n,nd lassies trucked in high and professional style at the dance in the school gym (the only realistic point in the show), and the foot 'ImU team gargled alcohol instead of water during The Big Game (a mistake of the water hoy’s, of course) with the quarterback be coming very confused and staggering over to find his place every time the team shifted. uevci nccii .The whole lot of characters iooKea UKe tney nau (.he inside of anything educational beyond the eighth grade. One wonders, too, if there is a director or producer in. Hollywood who ever went to college. We suppose there are, but why in heaven’s ■name can't they produce a college show that IS colloge. Why must there always he choruses of beautiful girls in the ‘fackground dressed with elaborate care In “sporty” sport clothes college girl would look at twice? Why must the men all play football and win the game for dear old Podunk in the last two 'Iminutes of pla> ? Why must there always be one intellectual stooge with horn-rimmed glasses and a book (there was one in ‘Start Cheering,” too, only it was a girl and pretty soon she took off the •g:Hasses and sang in a deep throaty voice. Why must all deans have long names and wear tail coats? Why must the whole school year hinge‘on the Big Game with State ! Why must there always be someone like Jimmy Durante to arouse the college when there never is anyone that funny within miles, worse luck ? One of the scenes in “Start Cheering” depicts the “crowd” sit ing on somebody’s veranda listening to the husky-voiced gal sing »fmg a sol) number. Then they all join in the chorus, boys and girls amorously entwined in each other’s arms and the whole thing t o era/a for words. What, we inquire, would the dean of women »*uy? (She Incidentally, was a dried-up, spinslorish, grim-looldng old «fV'k named a^itly, Miss Grimley.) The three stooges were funny, but just as is the case with Mr. Durante, they would never be found on any campus. College might really be fun if they were. Some day, perhaps, some director or producer will see the drama, lUe humor and color in college life as it really is and will produce .) show that depicts those qualities. Until then, we shall have to •M'.ffer over such lazily-conceived, sloppy productions as ‘‘Start Cheering," and the rah-rah picture they present. And college was NEVER like that! n I SIDE SHOW As Roosevelt returns from an apparently peaceful vacation in Georgia, he finds once, again that people are casting sidelong 'p1 races at him. mumbling “dictator” under their breaths. And ( , in spite of his letter to the unnamed friend, in which he an ‘*i umced that he had neither the ability nor the inclination to be r dictator. ' We hate t > appear nai\o, but deep down within ourselves we ■'|i -lie\e that 1’ooseveH n.is fundamentally telling the truth in this * vdtieial confession. As a result we are not too worried over Cue government reorganization hill which is roiling up so many ople these days. While no one realizes exactly what the reorganization will do, •#> -patently 150.000 telegram-senders had definite enough opinions x-pon the subject to spend good money for wires to their congress > ? - Tin* bill provides that the president shall be given the power < consolidate, transfer, or remove any of the numerous govern Y.xenial bureaus he may find in need of tins treatment. As the Y.easure passed the senate, the president was given the final v. ord. the traditional power of review being discarded in regard t ■ the steps he might take under the provision of the original bill. * $ # In favor of the main purposes of the reorganization measure it may be said that '.luring the past two administrations the federal <1 veminent has been adding bureaus about as sensibly as rooms v \ro added to the famed Winchester house of California, whose f.l ghtly demented owner added a room every year without plan or system. A consolidation, transfer, or' removal of numerous bureaus is » • ieed a necessity The 14 different offices on housing and others \ > have forgotten should be reorganized on a more systematic and c anomic basis. ,/ JMfcJffli t How t ' lo this is another thing. The quickest and easiest way. \ auld be as FDF. originally suggested — give him the entire say-so. a free hand to cut,, change, or transfer as he saw 3 without the interfering squabbles of a congress that has to •» member constituents, nepotism, etc. f/Y«\»jro turn to /vn/.• six) LEROY MATTINGLY, Editor WALTER R. VERNSTROM, Manager LLOYD TUPLING, Managing Editor Associate Editors: Paul Deutschmann, Clare Igoe. Editorial Board: Darrel Ellis, Bill Peace, Margaret Ray, Edwin Robbins, A1 Dickhart, Kenneth Kirtley, Bernardine Bowman. TTPPET5 NEWS STAFF Bill Pengra, City Editor Lew Evans, Assistant Managing Editor Bill Norene, Sports Editor Martha Stewart. Women’s Editor Don Kennedy, Radio Editor Rita Wright, Society Editor Alyce Rogers, Exchange Editor Betty Jane Thompson, church editor Milton Levy, assistant chief night editor • More Sports for the 'Masses' QXE of the toughest jobs in coaching is cutting the squad.” That stament was made recently by a man who should know—Howard Hobson, now in Chicago for. a conference of basketball coaches, who three years ago assayed the difficult task of coaching, unassisted, two coast conference major sports. Coach Hobson make that remark while watching approximately 45 varsity baseball candidates take their turn at the plate. It takes a long time to give 45 men a try at bunting and their three “cuts.” “I wore blisters on my hands last night trying to ‘shag’ 18 would-be outfielders,” Coach Hob son continued. “I hate to drop men but every year it has to be done, otherwise we’d never get anyplace.” • ^^NALYZING the situation, baseball takes participants, 14 men are carried on the Oregon traveling squad, and 18 are retained, approximately, for the duration of the season. More than 45 or 50 men turn out. Around 30 of them, this number including some poten tially tine ball players, have to go despite their eagerness to play ball, their avid interest and willingness to learn, and the fact they all have hopefully purchased student body cards. In basketball it's a similar story except that more stringent restriction of numbers is necessary. Only five men make the first team, ten qualify for the “traveling ten,” and the entire squad can include only around 15 men. Here, too, there are many more aspirants than a single coach can handle. Football, of course, is different. Its several coaches can handle a squad of at least 45 men. Oregon usually has trouble in keeping the ranks filled, and, strangely enough in one sense, the sport in which the coaching staff is most complete is the sport which few students are interested in playing for the pure pleasure involved. It is the sport most heavily sub sidized. j^ESPITE successful efforts to extend in tramural program to include many stu dents as possible at Oregon, there exists here tin1 same inconsistency in athletic setup which prevails in every other college. Of the money spent for athletics, by far the largest portion goes into deevloping the talents of a favored few. The plan is extremely undemocratic, offering as it does only an attenuated and very weak schedule for the many. There is little chance of changing the coaching setup, either now or in the imme diate future. Founded on a fallacy, it will probably.someday give way to a broader pro gram. Extension will probably first come through the development of “junior varsity” teams much like the second boat of rowing and the lightweight teams now popular in Portland high schools. For the moment it is probably advisable to look to the ’intramural and minor sports programs for an attempt to place students in active competition in sports which really in terests them. Basketball and baseball will never, it is obvious, be both simultaneously minor and major sports. Some outlet for the exuberance of ambitious. basketball candi dates is provided presently in intramural bas ketball, but this is not true of baseball. For want of a better solution, intramural baseball seems the answer. It would at least provide competition for far more than the 30 unsuccessful varsity candidates. # J$! J^ASKETBALL was this year the strongest sport on the intramural program by far. When necessity, two years ago, forced the intramural board to cast about for a new fall program, touch football was offered and was received with tremendous enthusiasm. True, the experiment was not entirely success ful because the game was too rough for un trained and unequipped students but this would not prove true of intramural baseball. Intramural baseball might not prove as popular as basketball but it would definitely add a great deal to the program. Softball is a poor substitute for baseball: the two games are very different, so much so that softball may be a valuable sport in its own right—but it cannot compare with or replace baseball. Intramural baseball would be but a poor stopgap, partially filling the need in one sport, for a truly broadened program. It would bol ster intramural and would be an immediate, if necessarily unsatisfactory, solution to an important and far-reaching problem. Dr. John Henry Nash, Fine Printer JX 1 he fifteenth century Europe passed out of tin1 dark ages into a new era of enlighten ment. One of the primary causes of that transition and all of its widespread develop ments down to the present, was the invention of printing, which made possible the duplica tion of books in large numbers, making know ledge available to a larger • group of the people. With five centuries of tradition behind it printing has become one of the finest of arts, as well as being the greatest single cause for the enlightenment of mankind. It is pursued with care and enthusiasm by craftsmen in all parts of the globe. One of the most outstanding modern printers is John Henry Nash of San Francisco, who has made his mark in the world of graphic arts. Besides being a craftsman in his own right Hr. Nash has won fame as a eonnoisseuh of printed art. Today the results of many years of dili gent collecting M ill be installed in the Univer sity of Oregon library, when Dr. Nash's $150, 000 of rare books is to be displayed. This collection, one of the finest of its type in the United States, lias been loaned to the Uni versity library by l)r. Nash for an indefinite period. «= # * ^JpiIE donor of the books is an interesting as well as famous man. 'Without a bit of conceit he can evaluate his own work in a manner so honest as to approach the niave and can discuss the worth of his fine collec tion with the abstraction of the true book lover. Although he is a California. Dr. Nash is actually a member of the faculty of the Ore gon school of journalism and has long been interested in this University. For many years lie has outlined a project for the typography class and has sent north the materials to com plete it has even* criticized and revamped the final work. Some of the books produced under his adyisorship are truly beautiful. Ur. Nash's deep love of books, his great skill. and Ins sense of beauty have made him an outstanding fine printer. These qualities have also made him an avid collector of fine books. rl lie collection which he is loaning Ore gon is one of the best.