Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 18, 1944)
HUJUUUII1IIIIIIIIII Oregon W Emerald MARJORIE M. GOODWIN EDITOR ELIZABETH EDMUNDS BUSINESS MANAGER MARJORIE YOUNG Managing Editor ROSEANN LECKIE Advertising Manager ANNE CRAVEN News Editor Norris Yates, Joanne Nichols Associate Editors EDITORIAL BOARD Edith Newton Shirley Stearns, Executive Secretary Shaun McDermott, Warren Miller Army Coeditors Hob Stiles, Sports Editor Carol Greening, Betty Ann Stevens, Co-Women's Editors Bill Bindley, Staff Photographer Carol Cook, Chief Night Editor Published daily during the college year except Sundaya, Mondays, and hohdaya and final examination periods by the Associated Students, University of Oregon. Entered as second-class matter at the postoffice. Eugene, Oregon._____ She 9 4. a . . . Campus ‘‘BWOC’s” arc touring the circuit to aid the Uni versity’s contribution to the fourth war loan drive. Main talk ing point at first glance appears to be: support your house candidate, so she can have a date with the handsome soldier, •etc. etc. At first glance, that is. Beneath the rah-rah and the keen competition for the title “Bonds Away Girl”, this campus drive is pretty serious. Deadly serious is a better description. For the girls who run out the door when they see the mailman coming down the street realize what their bond purchases mean to the boy they write to. They know, better than anyone else, just what could happen if that boy did not have the equipment he needed, when he needed it. * i|; * sfc War has hit our generation the hardest of any. Oregon girls have high stakes in an Allied victory because their sweet hearts and their brothers will or will not return depending to a great extent upon home front bond-buying. They are willing to help where they can. In the current bond drive that help means giving up the yew clothes and tucking away a bond. It means war stamps instead of cokes—until the day that spe cial soldier can come back to share a coke date. Their stake is also important when they remember that bonds they buy now will make a difference when depression follows the war. Their future homes, their careers need just such regular, bond-filled nest-eggs. >}c :K * When the “Bonds Away Girl” is chosen by bond sale totals her house will be proud—because she is a symbol. She is a tribute to all the suppressed hope and the loneliness which comes from waiting for letters, from wishing very hard that peacetime were here, that the soldier could come home. And because of that, she is very important. She is Oregon’s way of saying “Win the War!” M. M. G. # ojf an • 4 The scrappy, pop-eyed Casanova on the front page of Es quire might well become the symbol of a decadent era and a part of the “good-old-days” philosophy of tomorrow’s remi niscing. With a si}’, “Lemon-Punch” brand of humor, his cartoons, prose, verse, short stories, and articles were as much a part of the college scene as cokes . . . even to the feminine element. Postmaster-General Frank Walker has ruled that articles in the magazine do not meet the requirements of being “origi nated and published for the dissemination of information of a public character, or devoted to literature, the sciences, arts, or some special industry.” With this verdict, he has cancelled the magazine’s second-class mailing privileges. Will the pulps come under this ruling? Speculation arises concerning “freedom of the press” . . . whether a precedent will be established, depending on the courts' support of his ruling, which will give the postmaster general powers of censorship not held previously in any demo cratic form of government. Political alarmists, now feeling the prickle of "Mac Arthur-for-president” pins, wonder. Could it affect political publications coming under the second-class 1 rivilegc ? Is the pop-eyed Casanova, with his assorted Varga and Petty girls obscene? That was the original question, finally side-stepped by Mr. Walker. Roars of unobscene laughter greeted court room exposure of "lewd and lascivious” material. Five years ago Esquire had a more lusty tinge, and Casa nova a boudoir smirk which might have deserved the action. Since 1940, however, the magazine has acquired respectabilitv, and Casanova a "Frank Morgan” type of leer. Mr. Walker’s appointed board of three post office officials decided two to one in favor of the magazine, after six months f investigation and three and one-half weeks of testimony. '.I'hen Mr. Walker reversed the decision. Even in time of war, docs the postmaster-general hold this power? B. A. S. Anvil Chorus I! By NORRIS YATES II A very timely and pertinent ar ticle in the latest issue of the Music Educators’ Journal “gives us pause.” It deals with the type of music we Americans listen to in wartime. “Here we are, fighting a war,” the article runs. “And what sort of music do we listen to? Any thing with healthy vitality, the vigor of a free and fighting people running through it? Not on your life! “We much prefer to cram cfown our throats a lush, luxuriant, ro mantic type of music coupled with syrupy drivel that possesses no strength whatsoever. Instead of choosing musical entertain ment with life in it, we pick out the very worst type for a nation at war.” This article expresses the views of quite a few of us to a “T”. Moreover, it brings up some other good points: The taste of the modern student for music begins with the "moody, introspective Tschaikowsky.’’ The “defiant gaiety” of Haydn, the “dance-loving” Mozart, and the “restless, triumphant” Beethoven are among others mentioned as being rejected wholly or for the most part by the sophisticated modern who must have fireworks, elaboration, “sound and fury” with his music. Bach also is classed by the Journal’s article among those re jected “except when served up with passionate sentiment a la Stokowski, with orchestral sauces that ruin the crispness and flavor of the original.” The article leaves some of its meanings clouded, however. Does everyone who is fed up with the slushy, syrupy jazz of Sinatra and the rest of his tribe want to switch abruptly to songs of patriotic propaganda that, while admitted ly containing more life and fire, are the purest trash, musically speaking ? The blast of propaganda now being delivered at the American public under the name of “music’’ has no parallel in our country’s history. Some of us, at least, re fuse to believe that a half or even a tenth part of this is necessary. The American people have shown themselves to be patriotic and full of energy. They don’t need to be hypnotized into carrying on this war. But after all, just what, if any thing, can be done about it? Well, it seems to us that plenty can be done. Almost all the people who write music are competent music ians. They know good music from bad. And it is quite possible to write good music even within the cramping and discouraging forms to which commercial necessity limits the vast majority of com posers. Therefore, the blame lies partly with the songwriters. The rest lies with the public, which continually requests such junk. A public needled by enough kickers would demand a change. A lot of students may wonder if the problem is serious enough to make such a kick about. We think that it is. The taste of the American public is proverbially low. And it is in danger of slipping lower due to the continued expos ure to wartime “propaganda music” and sentimental drooling. Perhaps the alarm is only a fancied one. Slips in taste during wartime are often likely to be followed by a corresponding rise afterward. But until the duration the pro cession of m usical garbage stretches behind and on ahead of us, in the paraphrasing of a cer tain popular instructor on this campus, “ad infinitum, ad nau seum”. The Cutting Room By BILL BUELL Phosphorescent hoops dancing about on a dark screen, chorus girls viewed through a constantly shifting kaleidoscope, and constellations of bodiless heads dispersed upon a bright blue background are typical of the absurdly fantastic technicolor spectacles to which “The Gang’s All Here” resorts in an effort to differentiate itself from all the similar escape musicals per functorily manufactured by the - - - - - - - Hollywood assembly line. Most of these photographic novelties for the sake of novelty are as totally ineffective as the beverage of the Lucky Lager company labels “beer.” The picture is as plotless as “Finnegan’s Wake.’’ Hanging pre cariously from the corners of a hastily sketched love triangle about a sergeant (James Ellison) who “two-times” a chorus girl (Alice Faye) are the assorted musical extravaganzas and comic interludes which constitute the picture. Phil Baker, Carmen Mir anda, Charlotte “the long-stem med flower” Greenwood, and the inevitable Edward Everett Horton all endeavor to entertain by ex hibiting their stereotyped person alities and routines. Swing king Benny- Goodman is there too. His band provides at mosphere for the night club scenes, backgrounds for the vo calists, accompaniments for the dancers. Benny gets off a few clarinet licks on that rock-solid gutbucket favorite, “A Journey to a Star.” He even sings. But somehow or other, the pro ducers neglected to include any uninterrupted instrumental num bers by the Goodman band. Miss Faye, of course, is beauti ful. This is the first time we ever saw a girl appear in a sheer, strap less, shoulder-exposing blouse to do her solitary weekly ironing. But then of course we don’t see many girls doing their solitary weekly ironing. “She was so smooth she could waltz around with a glass of beer on her bustle and never disturb the foam,” says Phil Baker as he describes the former glamour of the bovine Miss Greenwood. That quotation has broad im plications for the entire picture. “The Gang’s All Here” is a smooth production job; but it is so com pletely outside reality that it doesn’t disturb us in the least. Pna and Cost 'January 13, 3^.4 To the Editor of “The Cutting Room” In your last column you took it upon yourself to review “Lassie Come Home”. Would it be asking too much to ask you on what basis you con sider yourself a criterion of mo tion pictures, and particularly a judge of dramatic ability? You literally tore the picture apart with what I presume you considered “snappy” comments, on what a truly?,poor picture it was. You then ended with a grand flourish stating that, (if I may quote) “even the dog was a better actor than Roddie McDowell.’’^ Now really, better judges than you believe this young actor to be rather good in his line. Instead of giving such poor criticism, why dfl^Tt^you become more proficient iniyour line—leave others alone—!!! W‘ One-Tirjjte Reporter is of Los Angeles Times P. S.: Let’s see thifcih print ? Huh ? One hundred sight recent pe troleum engineering graduates at the University ofpTexas are now in the armed services. _ _r_ nr McDonald Theatre Bldg. 1004 Willamette Phone 633 $5.sjS • REI> • BROWN • BEIGE • GRAY Salon on Balcony Budget Accounts Accepted