Now, Edwin R. Murrow and the voices of Winston Churchill, Senator Estes Kefauver, Ambassador
William O'Dwyer, Frank Costello, Larry Parks, Governor Earl Warren, Walter Ruther, Senator
Robert Taft, Pierre Balmain, and a biography of a woman's hat, and more than 40 other men
and women in the news in the 15th performance of Hear It Now, presented tonight and every
week at this time.
She can't make the bed anymore, and she's always watching the damn television on this
whole business of investigation, and I wish you'd cut it out fast.
We are in a sad, somber period of world history where no household can have the feeling that
they can go to sleep without the fear that something awful is moving towards them.
I think you look very chic in it.
If you've got a new Easter outfit in order to top it off, fine, dear.
It's very chic, dear.
It fits wonderful, and you look like a dream in it.
Hear It Now, the Columbia Broadcasting System and 173 affiliated radio stations present
a document for air based on the week's news and the men and women who made it.
All the voices and sounds you will hear are real and are presented as they were recorded
in the heat and confusion of a world in crisis.
Here is the editor of Hear It Now, the distinguished reporter and news analyst, Edward R. Murrow.
There was that strange, exciting, almost carnival-like atmosphere in the air this week.
It's only because it is a mood usually reserved for World Series games in the autumn and political
conventions every four years.
An atmosphere of excitement and some tension when strangers meeting on the New York subway
or a St. Louis bus or a Chicago elevator had one common thing to talk about, and that was
the hearings pouring forth from television sets and radio receivers.
There was a great new hit show in the land that neither South Pacific nor burlesque shows
nor new spring fashions in the stores nor the horse races could compete with.
In the soap operas, the second husband and the second Mrs. Burton played second fiddle
to the Kefauver-Toby-Halley hit, playing its final, if split, week at the Foley Square
Courthouse in the city that will not soon forget them.
While the hearings were in session this week, we took our microphones to a few stores, bars,
and offices just to learn how this new habit of viewing and listening had affected the
life of the average citizen.
We did this in both New York and St. Louis.
First the New York reaction.
We can't make the bed anymore, and she's always watching the damn television on this whole
business of investigation, and I wish you'd cut it out fast.
I have a grocery on Third Avenue in New York, and we have women coming in for rolls and
bread in the morning, and usually we don't get the rolls till about 9.30, a quarter to
10.
Since the committee hearings are televised, they haven't even got time to wait for the
rolls because the program goes on at 9.30 on television.
Therefore we get stuck even with rolls during the day.
The woman told me, which is true, that they haven't had anything to eat for three days.
They didn't want to go out to eat, and they didn't want to leave the television to go
out and buy.
And so we're all hoping for the sake of business that the hearings are over soon, because bills
have to be paid.
I threw the television set out because people started out waiting, coming in, sitting for
two hours with one beer in front of them.
Practically all strangers I was coming in, people I'd never seen before in my life.
As soon as the hearing is over, I'm going to put the television set back again.
I don't know, these hearings are a menace.
Every time I call my wife on the telephone, she says, look, I'm very busy, they're right
in the most important part of this thing.
I can't talk to you now, I'll call you back, and she hangs up.
In St. Louis, our CBS station asked, how have the Keefauer hearings affected your home life?
I'm a St. Louis theater manager.
Televising of the Senate Crime Committee hearings has very definitely cut into the motion picture
theater attendance.
It's a new kind of competition that will be very difficult to beat.
What I have seen of the trial has been most interesting, but I have done none of my housework
from watching it all the time.
I don't do my dishes, my beds aren't made, I don't go to the store, and my husband gets
mad at me.
I'm a cab driver.
Boy, business sure is bad.
No one on the streets, nobody seems to be riding cabs now.
Everybody indoors watching TV.
Boy, if this keeps up, I'm going broke.
Last week's star witness was Frank Costello.
This week it was ex-mayor William O'Dwyer.
But last week's star was also this week's featured player.
And in addition to being television's most prominent pair of hands, he also provided
the English language with several ingenious new ways of saying, I don't know.
Oh, I wouldn't remember.
Not to my recollection.
I can't very well answer that question.
I think it's unfair.
I refuse to answer that question.
You got me here at a disadvantage.
I can't cross-examine.
Well, I don't remember.
Well, I can swear that it's not to my recollection.
I decline to answer that, Mr. Halley.
I couldn't swear that I didn't.
But I'm not going to swear that I did.
Not to my knowledge.
I wouldn't know if I don't ask questions.
No, that's ridiculous, Mr. Halley.
I will not.
I won't answer that question.
No.
Repeat that, Mr. Halley.
No.
Frank Costello is what they call a named gangster.
He's one of the leaders of the New York-Miami Crime Axis.
Slick, immaculately well-groomed, he worked diligently to present himself as a dignified
entrepreneur of respectable businesses, including Cupid dolls, pressure cookers, and ice cream
pies.
But the committee, and Senator Toby in particular, were not convinced.
The New Hampshire senator asked Costello, you must have in your mind some things you've
done that you can speak of to your credit as an American citizen.
If so, what are they?
Paid by tax.
But the relentless interrogation of committee counsel, Rudolph Halley, continued to hack
away at Costello's self-made island of I don't choose to answer immunity.
Costello finally was jockeyed into a position where he had to admit that just by coincidence,
he knew a few Tammany leaders socially, 14 of them.
Well, you've continued to associate very closely with a great many people in politics, haven't
you?
Well, I don't know if you call it associate.
If I meet them, I'll talk to them, and they talk to me, and we'll have a drink or something.
Well, you had two of them up to your home for Thanksgiving dinner last Thanksgiving,
didn't you?
Well, I've known them for over 30 years.
And we never spoke politics.
What else do district leaders talk but politics?
Well, I don't know.
Don't you know any of them?
Doesn't the talk invariably go to politics?
Well, if they do, I don't pay no attention to them.
Now, as a matter of fact, I don't think I ever met any one of them, except Carmen de
Sapio, whom I have met recently when he came up here.
I don't think I know any of them who answer your question, not one.
I believe it may be a better off.
But the committee kept asking questions, wanted to know just what it was that made Costello
such a prize for politicians to know.
Well, I can't really explain that, Mr. Halley.
The idea is that I've been living all my life in the neighborhood, in Manhattan Island.
I know them, know them well, and maybe they've got a little comforts in me.
And if I use a little judgment, say I think that you should do this because you make a
good leader, an honest leader, I wouldn't know.
I can't explain that.
Well, it goes further than that, doesn't it, Mr. Costello?
After all, many of us have lived in New York all of our lives.
I think you testified you haven't ever even voted.
Is that right?
That's right.
You're not a member of any political organization?
No.
And never were?
No.
And you've never made a political contribution?
No, and I'm not a politician.
Ambassador O'Dwyer, a lawyer and a former district attorney as well as mayor, was next
on the witness stand.
Senator Toby asked him what he thought was the secret of Costello's influence.
It's a funny thing what magnetism that man has to attain, isn't it?
How do you analyze it?
Look him over, you wouldn't, you'd mark him pretty near minus zero, but what is the, what
is the attraction, what has he got, what kind of appeal, what is it?
It doesn't matter whether it's a banker, a businessman, or a gangster, his pocketbook
is always attractive.
O'Dwyer had known Costello from other days.
Recall that while an army major, he ended up a brigadier general, he had kept an appointment
at the Costello home in New York.
O'Dwyer was investigating certain Air Force frauds and needed certain information.
He was surprised to find certain Tammany members with Costello at the time.
Had he forgotten this?
I haven't forgotten it.
And I didn't forget it.
It would seem to me that that would be the dominating thing in your thinking about this
sinister influence in Tammany Hall.
Mr. Halley, I have said it once and I'll say it again.
Of course it was one of the factors.
One of the things I was talking about is sinister influences, but there were many others.
But it was a very important factor, was it not?
That's right, of course.
O'Dwyer would never forget.
He told the committee that later, when he was mayor, he had constantly fought Tammany
Hall, tried to clean it up.
But another Democrat, Bert Stand, an old Tammany hand, offered the committee another story.
O'Dwyer's actions were always confusing, contradictory, and irrational.
He changed the leadership in Tammany Hall almost as often as he changed his mind.
The public, however, was apparently misled by all his artful double talk into believing
that O'Dwyer sought to reform the organization when actually his only objective was to control
it.
And he did control it.
For many hours, over two long days, O'Dwyer dueled with the committee council.
O'Dwyer had appeared before the committee voluntarily, said he welcomed the opportunity.
The testimony developed that Mayor O'Dwyer had appointed a city marshal, a deputy hospital
commissioner, a special sessions judge, and others who had some sort of connection with
the underworld.
Council Halley particularly wanted to know about why a relative of gangster Willie Moretti
got the hospital job.
Could you have found somebody for that hospital department job who wasn't related to Willie
Moretti?
Find a hundred.
There are things that you have to do politically if you want to get cooperation.
But according to Mayor O'Dwyer's testimony, there was no cooperation between the mayor's
office and the city's uniformed fireman's organization.
Council Halley again.
Do you know John P. Crane?
I do.
Did he, during the year 1949, ever visit you at the Gracie Mansion?
Don't recall that.
Is it possible that he might have?
Possible.
But you have no definite recollection.
That's right.
Could he have visited you more than once there?
Committees came there all the time.
Did he ever come alone?
I never recall him coming alone.
Would you say that it might be possible that he did come there alone?
I'd say that it was not likely that he came alone.
Do you know whether Mr. Crane ever made any campaign contributions?
I don't know.
Did he ever make any, too, or through you?
He did not.
The next day, the Senate committee heard the other side of the story from John Crane, head
of the uniformed fireman.
I told him I wanted to see him.
He said, drop up the mansion.
I can't tell you the date, but it was a couple of days later.
And you went up to the Gracie Mansion?
That's right.
And you saw Mayor O'Dwyer?
Yes, sir.
Were you alone with him?
Yes, sir.
Where did you see him?
On the porch of Gracie Mansion.
Can you tell the committee what transpired?
I had promised him the support of the fireman, and I offered him some evidence of that support
on the occasion in the form of $10,000.
And was that in cash?
That was in cash.
What did the mayor say?
He thanked me.
That was about all.
How long were you there?
About more than 10 minutes.
Ambassador O'Dwyer denied the Crane's story completely.
So did an old friend of the mayor's, Water Commissioner James J. Moran, who was supposed
to have received $55,000 from Fireman Crane.
Moran was immediately asked to resign his $15,000 a year lifetime job.
He did.
Fireman Crane also told of contributions to the New York State Democratic Committee, to
Governor Dewey's 1948 presidential primary in Oregon.
A local Republican leader who had accepted the gift said that not until this year did
the governor know who contributed the money.
This was pay dirt.
The television audience had its first chance to gasp at this story of big money and big
politicians.
The Crane testimony was the climax of the committee's hearings in New York.
The senators decided to end right there, to let the Justice Department examine the record,
let the other cities in the nation measure their own conditions against those in New
York, let the educational value of its televised broadcast hearings sink into the conscience
of America.
It took less than 24 hours before the committee had concrete proof of just how educational
its New York hearings had been.
To the witness stand in Washington came Jacob Reesythumb Guzik, a Chicago gangster.
Like many a witness before him, Guzik refused to testify on any important detail.
He would stand on his constitutional rights.
Listen to his legal answer to a question from Senator Wiley of Wisconsin.
I refuse the answer because some questions are not pertinent and some may lead or tend
to incriminate me.
Well, are you a lawyer?
No sir.
Have you consulted with a lawyer?
No sir.
Have you, where'd you get this phrase you've been using all the time?
I've heard it on a television here.
The New York hearing left many things hanging in midair.
The committee left this city with the final effort to get Governor Dewey to tell about
the deportation of Lucky Luciano, about the gambling situation in Saratoga, and before
the final gavel, there was even time for reading a request to correct the record.
In the course of Counselor Halley's interrogation of Frank Costello this morning, the name of
Eskimo Pie was identified as one of the products made by Dainty Products Corporation.
The Eskimo Pie Corporation owns all trademarks and rights of the name Eskimo Pie.
The Eskimo Pie Corporation has never had any connection with Frank Costello.
Mr. Halley, I'm sure, used the trademark name Eskimo Pie and Aero, simply meaning a chocolate
covered ice cream product.
Mr. Halley, will you join in the retraction and listen?
I hope the president of the Eskimo Pie Company will pardon the expression.
The Senate Crime Committee proved many things.
In addition to being both successful and spectacular, it was conducted with considerable calmness
and even good taste and dignity.
Congressional hearings have not always been that way.
Future committee chairman would do well to follow the pattern set by Estes Kiefhauer,
and investigators would long study the tactics of Rudolph Halley.
But probers would have a difficult time emulating the role of Charles Tobey of New Hampshire.
If he contributed little to the actual interrogation of the witnesses, tearful Tobey was, in his
poetic wrath, a kind of composite citizen, as bewildered and as indignant as most of
us over what had been heard in the federal courthouse in Foley Square.
What you heard today here is not America.
If you want to know what America is, you are in the hittilands of this country, in the
farm homes and the village homes, to the men who come at night to greet a wife and little
children who pay their taxes and worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience
and love America.
And there's 10,000 times as many of those as there are these crooks that came before
us.
Chief Counsel Halley, who with his staff had exposed the evil, felt like many another New
Yorker.
Gently, he corrected the gentleman from New Hampshire.
Senator Tobey, I've lived here all my life.
And I know that when you said that to find all these fine, honest people, one must go
into the hittilands, you meant simply the hittilands away from the centers of criminal
activity.
That's correct.
Those hittilands exist here in New York City, all over the city.
New York is a city in which there are fine, wonderful people, millions and millions of
them.
And I, as a New Yorker, must apologize to you and to Senator Keapover for those few
who've appeared before you here today.
The closing moment was near.
The bulging briefcases were being packed and locked for the trip back to home territory
in Washington for the last days of the committee's life.
Senator Tobey's farewell to New York was virtually the committee's farewell.
Great man came from New York years ago, and he became President of the United States,
and his name was Grover Cleveland.
And Grover Cleveland made a great classic utterance at one time, may it always live
in the hearts of those of us who serve the public in our respective capacities.
And he said, public office is a public trust.
The time has come, and I hope to God it has come, when the American people will rise up
and sound a warning note to this type all over this world and say, hold, enough.
Take heart, America, and don't be discouraged for one moment.
Let's not only sing God bless America, but the time has come to sing and to pray from
our hearts, God save America.
In ten long months, wherever the Senate Crime Commission has held hearings, the sinister
influences it exposed led many persons to suggest that the way to wipe out gambling
is to legalize it.
We have asked the governors of three states to give you their views on this proposal.
First, Governor Earl Warren of California.
The one thing the underworld cannot stand is a searchlight of public opinion.
I am unalterably opposed to any and all suggestions that we dim the searchlight or attempt to
legalize any of the gangster activities.
We cannot afford to temporize with any segment of the underworld.
Now, the governor of Nevada, Charles H. Russell.
Nevada is the only state which has legalized gambling, and the people of this state have
accepted it.
Due to the small population in the state, it is possible to carry out rigid controls
and to keep gambling as clean as possible.
I feel that legalized gambling is a matter of states' rights.
While it can and does operate successfully in Nevada, it would be impossible to control
and regulate on a nationwide basis, with each state having various regulations and restrictions.
And here is Adlai Stevenson, the governor of Illinois.
No, I don't think gambling should be legalized.
To legalize gambling sounds easy, but someone has to be licensed to operate the gambling
establishments.
And what reason have we to think that the same racketeers and gamblers who monopolize
illegal gambling by bribery, intimidation, and political corruption would not end up
as the licensed operators of legal gambling?
I think they would, and so do they.
If bribery and political corruption are effective in securing protection from the law, they
are also effective in securing favors under the law.
And I am not impressed with the familiar argument that legalized gambling would provide the
states a new source of revenue.
God forbid that government in this country should ever be supported by chance and the
misfortunes of a few for the benefit of the many.
It may be that the Senate Crime Commission's recommendation on legalized gambling will
influence a number of legislators and voters.
So we asked Chairman Kiefhauer to give us an advanced glimpse of what his committee's
report will recommend.
Well, we will say, and in our report we'll very definitely say that it should not be
that legalized gambling is not the answer.
And while we were talking to Estes Kiefhauer at the end of his long, hard task, we asked
him a question that has occurred to many of us since the day the committee was appointed.
Have there been any attempts to put pressure on the committee to get it to water down its
attack on crime?
Here is Senator Kiefhauer's answer.
Yes, Ed.
We've had a good many rather indirect efforts to get us to water down here and there in
particular sections.
Well, it's always been a local situation where a local person who would have a sympathy
with a particular person's situation would come to see us about it.
But I think after about two months when they saw that we were going to do what we thought
was the right thing, regardless of politics or regardless of influences, they have laid
off pretty much.
So we haven't had any pressures in the last six or eight months anyway.
I must say that in fairness that from the administration that I've had no pressure whatsoever.
You can always find news in Washington, almost any kind.
Sometimes even music makes news.
The music you hear is the new marching song for the city of Washington.
Long has our nation's capital suffered the hardship of not having a musical theme to
compete with Kentucky's old Kentucky home, Missouri's waltz and California here I come.
As one citizen put it, well, I thought whenever you go out to a convention, if the guy next
table starts singing the guys in Texas are upon you, he was a good Washingtonian will
start singing the guys of Texas are upon you.
So a committee was formed which included Vice President Barkley and many others.
The district commissioner of Columbia, the nearest thing to a mayor of Washington, F.
Joseph Donahue, put it in the form of a resolution.
Whereas the district of Columbia here before has not had a song which could be considered
the song of the district of Columbia.
And whereas in order to select a song which could be designated.
There were 3000 entries.
This week the committee of judges, which included Sigmund Space and Sigmund Romberg, picked
its winner.
Washington had a new anthem.
Its author was Jimmy Dodds of Ohio.
Cherry blossoms bring a lot of joy each spring.
And the statue of Abe Lincoln, breach your eye.
When parades pass in review down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Everybody lifts their voices to the sky.
Washington, the fairest city in the greatest land of all.
Name for one, our country's father, who first answered freedom's call.
God bless our White House, our Capitol too.
In Washington, as in New York, it was still hearings that dominated the news.
The House Committee on Un-American Activities, which was scheduled to open the day after
the crime hearings ended here in New York, got a bad break and had a tough time competing
for the spotlight when the crime hearings continued on an extra two days.
Now, this chairman I'd like to call is the first witness, Mr. Larry Park.
Is Mr. Park present?
Will you stand please?
This week the House Un-American Activities Committee went into the business of communism
in Hollywood.
The star witness was Larry Park, a Kansas farm boy who scored brilliantly in two Jolson
films, and who admitted that in 1941, when he was young and impressionable, he joined
the Communist Party.
In 1941, being a member of the Communist Party, fulfilled certain needs of a young man that
was liberal in thought, idealistic, who was for the underprivileged, the underdog.
I felt that it fulfilled these particular needs.
I think that being a communist in 1951, in this particular situation, is an entirely
different kettle of fish when this is a great power that is trying to take over the world.
Parkes then was asked to name other film personalities who had been members of the Red Cell.
He refused.
After the noon lunch, the committee asked him again.
Parkes restated that he had left the party in 1945, that he was aware of the fact that
his career was in serious jeopardy, but that he would not snitch.
Mr. Parkes again.
I don't think that I would be here today if I wasn't a star, because you know as well
as I even better that I know nothing that would really be, I don't believe, of great
service to this committee.
I think my career has been ruined because of this, and I would appreciate not having
to present me with the choice of either being in contempt of this committee and going to
jail or forcing me to really crawl through the mud to be an informer.
For what purpose?
So I beg you not to force me to do this.
Parkes later provided some names in a secret session.
The Fulbright Committee was still investigating corruption in the RFC.
The tragedy of the pastel mink coats and the exorbitant legal fees for government loans
seemed to be coming to a close.
There would be a complete reorganization of the RFC.
There was talk of ending its life.
There was the bitter humiliation for hundreds of capable civil servants who had made government
their life, men below the top political jobs.
One such person is William E. Unziker, who joined the RFC in 1932, soon after it was
established by Herbert Hoover.
He remained in it for 20 years, watched it serve the nation in depression.
Plants needed funds to expand and help unemployment.
In war, when RFC helped build plane and tank factories.
This week, William Unziker went before the Fulbright Committee, said that he had resigned
out of humiliation and shame.
We used to walk around with our chins up and our heads out for RFC.
We were proud to be employees of it.
The RFC has done an outstanding thing.
Not only in the way of putting out billions of dollars and getting them back at a minimum
loss, but there's intrinsic values over and above what you cannot measure by dollars.
There's been family saved.
There's been education saved during the period of 1932 up to 35.
Many of us who worked overtime, we've seen three shifts come on.
We worked night and day.
And to have this happen is a shame and it's a tragedy for this country.
That's all there is to it.
During the war, we rendered invaluable service.
We saved lives of boys.
We took action.
And I mean, we worked hard.
We had a tremendous job.
We did not lose money.
We did not lose assets.
We had administrative control worthy of any government organization during the period.
Accountants never get much recognition anywhere at any time.
They have given the dirtiest jobs to perform and they are condemned all the time.
And they never get a chance to speak out.
I think RFC has a future that can be rendered to this nation second to none if properly
conducted at the top with men of high integrity and ability.
In Washington, the man who established the RFC and the president now charged with its
operation were both, oddly enough, the subject of a new Senate bill which would make both
of them permanent fixtures in the Capitol.
Senator Owen Brewster, Republican of Maine, said that with the new amendment limiting
the president to two terms, it was time to make a permanent place in government for our
ex-presidents.
It is tragic that men who have occupied so exalted a position should not have a definite
place in our civic life in their later years where they could put their information at
the disposal of the country.
And this is accounted for the development of the idea of so-called senators at large
who would have all the rights and privileges of a senator except the right to vote so that
they would have an office and staff here where they could meet with people of the country
and with their associates.
And it's possible that in another year or so we may now, we may have another occupant
of the office of ex-president of the United States whom I should be happy also to welcome
to the Senate on that basis.
Republican Senator Taft spoke in Virginia this week, said that radio commentators were
tools of the fair deal.
The facts are never clearly presented, but only from one point of view, a typical pattern
of pure unprincipled propaganda.
Government departments have unlimited publicity, men of their own.
They have a strong and improper influence over many radio commentators so that when
a policy is decided upon, the very next morning the air is heavily burdened with commentators
boosting the party line.
This policy is not a policy of truth and frankness.
In London, a most distinguished commentator, occasionally accused of bias, talked about
Joseph Stalin.
Actually, Mr. Churchill was making a political broadcast stating that there was no confidence
in the athlete government in calling out for a general election.
But there were portions of the talk which were not just conservative politics, but rather
a platform of intentions for England and the entire free world.
In spite of an obvious head cold, it was also Churchillian prose at its best.
In 1940, remember that, at the time of the Battle of Britain, everyone could see our
danger was very great.
In my opinion, the dangers which many of us cannot see are even greater now.
What is our goal?
What is our heart's wish?
It is very plain.
It is very simple.
It is only the heart's desire of all the millions of ordinary men and women with their
hard workaday lives.
All the people still outside the totalitarian curtain all over the world, only their heart's
desire, freedom and peace.
The right to be let alone, to lead our own lives in our own way, under our own laws,
and give our children a fair chance to make the best of themselves.
It is not wrong for anyone to ask for that.
It is not much for Britain to ask.
We did our best to fight for it in the late war.
For a whole year we fought alone.
When at last all our enemies surrendered, we thought we had won it.
Won it at least for a lifetime.
But now it seems that we are again in jeopardy.
We are in a sad, somber period of world history where no good-hearted, valiant Russian soldier,
worker, or peasant, no hard-pressed, disillusioned German family, no home in the war-scarred
democracies of Western Europe, or in our own island we have guarded so long, so well, or
far across the Atlantic in mighty America.
No household can have the feeling after a long day's faithful toil that they can go
to sleep without the fear that something awful is moving towards them.
You are listening to Hear It Now, CBS's weekly document for air based on the
week's news.
The program continues immediately after this pause for station identification.
This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System.
This is program 15 on Hear It Now, a full hour review of the week's news told on the
actual recorded voices of the men and women who make the news.
Once again, here is the editor of Hear It Now, Edward R. Murrow.
Last December on Hear It Now, we gave you a report on the fall of Seoul, and you heard
the crying of frightened lost children on that last bridge going out of Seoul.
Now Seoul is back in our hands again, and on that same bridge, our microphone heard
this.
CBS correspondent John Jefferson was among the last to leave Seoul.
Last week, he was with the first patrol to reenter the charred battered city which has
changed hands four times in this ten-month-old war.
As he walked through the streets, suddenly choked with children again, he pushed the
switch of his recorder and heard and said this.
Excuse me, I wonder why I'm so winded.
This carrying this 25 pound recorder, field glasses, outside of a park, and a camera,
it takes the best of you.
They go to the patrol up ahead, I guess I'd better catch up.
CBS's, you'd better send a relief hot after this one.
Manzai, Manzai.
We're walking into the city, a shuffle of feet, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds of feet.
I've seen so much of this in the past six months that it's, thank goodness you become
used to it.
If you didn't, I don't think you'd keep on.
These are the little boys and tattered rags and tennis shoes, a little boy with bare feet
and little rubber sole shoes.
He has a clean face.
Here's another little tot.
God knows where their families are or how they eat.
Something very few of us have ever been able to figure out.
The answer is of course that most of them are always hungry.
Two little creatures with their clothes untattered and babushkas over their heads.
Looks like old gunny stocks wrapped around their bodies, but they have a big smile.
The youngsters walking alongside me now each have a baseball bat.
Baseball?
Yeah.
Ragon Muffin.
Manzai, Manzai.
Thank you.
Seoul is ours.
And within the past 24 hours, 3,300 American paratroopers were dropped to the north of
the city, just nine miles from the 38th parallel.
And tonight, General MacArthur reported, we have substantially cleared South Korea of
organized communist forces.
He told the Chinese communists, you can't win the war because you cannot make the essential
tools of war.
We have crippled your field forces.
We threaten your whole military structure if we should decide to bomb Manchuria and
your Chinese bases.
Therefore, said the general, I am ready to meet with your commander in chief in the field
to end the war without further bloodshed.
The communist timetable in Asia was in serious trouble.
The Chinese expedition into Korea had been a costly affair.
In other parts of the world, Yugoslavia and Iran loomed as the next possible stops on
the Russian expedition.
But General Wild Bill Donovan, wartime head of OSS, who is one of America's leading authorities
on espionage and secret agents, said that Russia may win Iran without a war.
General Donovan.
Iran produces 6% of the world's oil.
It is the most valuable of the non-American supply sources which serve the Western nations.
It is a vital strategic area and therefore a sought-after military prize.
But why should Stalin run the risk of a shooting war?
Instead, he called upon Tudor, the Soviet-controlled political party, to lead a movement in the
Iranian lower house, to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian oil company despite the fact that it is 53%
British-owned and is operated under a concession that does not expire until 1993.
In the past few weeks, three events of significance have happened in Iran.
First, the premier Ali Rasmara was shot to death by an assassin.
Second, Iran's oil industry was nationalized.
Then on Sunday of this week, the Soviet newspaper Pravda announced that Premier Rasmara had
been assassinated by American agents because he was anti-American.
This is not true.
Here is a piece of evidence on that point.
Here is an unreleased interview with Premier Rasmara recorded by CBS correspondent Arthur
Holtzman in Tehran less than 12 hours before the assassination.
First, the question of Iranian-American relations.
Mr. Prime Minister, I wonder if you can tell us something of the relations, the present
relations of Iran and America.
The relation between Iran and United States is very good and I must tell you that in this
10 years, in 9 years perhaps, United States has helped very much our country and we must
be very glad from this help.
The now deceased premier of Iran went on to say that he was against the nationalization
of the oil industries.
The Russians said we shot him because he was for it.
And then he went on to say that he was fighting communism in Iran with every weapon.
Mr. Prime Minister, I understand that the Communist Party is outlawed under the laws
of Iran.
Is that correct?
Yes.
From two years ago, from the new legislation, today, that is the communists in our country,
is illegal.
And in reality, if they found any of these people, they send to the justice and they
punish them.
And so spoke the premier of Iran, whom the Soviets claim we had shot.
Back in Washington, the controversy over the mobilization program continued with inflation
still unchecked and the cost of living seriously damaging the morale of the average citizen.
At a news conference in New York, price stabilizer Mike DeSalle was asked to name the price of
any food that had actually come down.
Mr. DeSalle replied, soaps, in a rollback in soap, soap prices, one to two cents a package.
A shoe manufacturer announced a reduction in men's shoes last week, 11 percent reduction.
And we asked Mr. DeSalle if the breach between Charles E. Wilson, the war mobilizer, and
organized labor was any nearer a solution.
I'm so awfully busy on the price side of this thing that I haven't paid too much attention
to the wage side of it.
And since they've been on leave for the time being, they haven't been around for us to
talk to them.
If Mr. DeSalle was too busy to know, most of the nation was not.
The big unions, except for John L. Lewis, were together in a mass meeting in Washington
and heard CIO Chief Phil Murray say, these national issues are understood by working
people, by housewives, small businessmen, by children in our schools and young people
in our colleges and armed services.
In fact, they're understood by everyone but the leaders of our mobilization program, who
just can't understand what the excitement is about.
Well, this meeting of ours is designed to help them understand.
And Walter Ruther of the Otto Workers said, I was designated as a member of the committee
to sit in the National Production Authority representing the National Labor Policy Committee
two and a half months ago.
And to this day, I have not been invited to a single meeting.
Now they talk about labor being on strike.
I say we got locked out.
We're not on strike.
They locked us out in the war mobilization effort.
Eric Johnston gives his version of what happened.
We had a wage stabilization board in our agency composed of three management, three labor,
and three public representatives.
Today we have no board.
We have no board because the three labor representatives withdrew in protest over a wage formula adopted
by the other six members of the board.
Now for the last 30 days, to the exclusion of almost everything else, I have been trying
to reconcile the differences between management and labor and get the wage board functioning
again.
I have conferred with management and then with labor and then with management again
and then with labor again.
During the week, half the night on Saturdays and Sundays, and I'm still doing it.
In the course of the past two weeks, those of us associated with Hear It Now agreed that
we ought to do something that catches the spirit of the Easter season.
Only because most of us are married, we came to an almost immediate and unanimous conclusion.
Easter just isn't Easter without a new bonnet.
At least that's what our wives have been telling us.
So we accepted the inevitable, sent our reporter Ed Scott about town to find out what was new
in spring hat fashions.
He came back with these recordings.
All the voices you're about to hear are those of sales girls, except the last.
That one is reporter Ed Scott.
The voices are real.
And as they were spoken, in the heat and confusion of hat shops in crisis.
What you've always dreamed about, staring with different rose buds.
A blouse crowned with a sheer gray visor.
That's a flower cage, sequined sparked apple blossoms anchored with the length of velvet
tubing.
You'll love the pretty procs and the completely devastating pillboxes.
They're lovely.
Yeah, they're lovely all right.
But they certainly don't look like hats to me.
It quickly became apparent that this business of ladies hats was just a little over our
head.
But being conscientious reporters, we turned to Paris, discovered that Pierre Bellemain
had again set the style for this year's Easter bonnet.
It's called coquille, made of white satin in the form of a delicate seashell.
Mr. Bellemain got his inspiration from a painting by Botticelli.
And that's how it all began.
What is more feminine than this painting by Botticelli?
And what is more feminine than the spring fashion in Paris this season?
I think that an Easter bonnet must be white.
After all, Easter is a very dressy occasion.
From the heart of Paris, Bellemain's creations are fed into style conscious homes throughout
the world.
So we decided to follow this coquille Easter bonnet from the time it leaves his sketching
board till it reaches your local shop, much copied and much less expensive.
In Bellemain's workshop, the girls assemble.
The day is about to begin.
With a majestic sweep, Bellemain, the impresario, enters.
I would like coquille really to be ready.
Can I show coquille to one or two of my private customers, my favorites, you know, people
that love it very much and that I love very much.
Well, who's that?
Well, there's Mrs. Taylor.
She's going away in two days and I'd love her to see it.
It's exactly her kind of hair.
If you make coquille for Mrs. Taylor, you must reduce it.
Besides, it's a bit too big for her.
Yes, of course I will.
She's a tiny hair.
And I'm not quite certain about the color for her because she's got a suit.
The day's operations have been charted.
Bellemain is deeply distressed about the angle of that feather once it changed.
Then he's off.
And the steady hum of the singer sewing machines begin.
Broken from time to time by Bellemain's legions, singing as they work.
At long last, coquille, the Easter bonnet, is ready for the showing.
And in the fitting room, Madame Spagnier, second in command, talks to Bellemain's favorite
model, Irene.
But Irene, what is all that blue on your eyes?
Don't you realize this isn't an evening hat with a lot of feathers we're going to show?
This is a day hat for America to go with a suit.
You shouldn't be dressed up like this.
Oh, do take some of that makeup off.
Yes, but you know that the lights, they change a little bit the makeup and then my eyes come
out much nicer and the color of the hat goes with the eyeshadow.
My little girl, I'm always telling you that nobody is going to look at your eyes, nobody
is going to look at you, they're going to look at the hat and we're here to sell the
hat.
While Irene gets ready to model coquille, the crowds gather outside.
But Bellemain insists on a most careful security check.
Doesn't want his designs copied before they can even get to the higher priced stores.
Have you anything to do with dressmaking, because at the moment you know it's very,
very strict because it's only the buyers we allow in.
No, absolutely nothing at all.
I think we'll let Madame in.
The big moment arrives, the show begins, and our intrepid Paris correspondent David Schonbrunn
watches the mannequins as they parade proudly and precisely down the beige carpeted runway.
The reaction of the customers is rather amusing when these new models come out.
The eyes, as with a slower tennis tournament, follow the model as she goes from one end
to the other of the platform.
There are hurried, whispered conversations between people who have come together and
I see a few of them, in spite of the surveillance at the door, are taking hurried notes on little
bits of paper held in their laps.
They're trying not to be too conspicuous about this.
Then the announcement, number 82, Coquille.
The showing is over.
Valman is relaxed and relieved.
And in his plush sales room, Madame Skanderbeck, a former princess, is among the first to appear.
I'd like to show you our new hat, which is having a great success, which is called Coquille.
Did you notice it?
It's in white satin with a feather through it.
It's very attractive and I'd love you to see it.
May I get it for you?
Please do.
I'd like to try it on.
Maritay, will you get me Coquille, please?
There you go.
Now here it is.
Now, Madame Skanderbeck, I just, look, try it on.
Just, just, just to give me pleasure, because I have a feeling that with your new suit this
is going to be perfectly lovely.
Oh, I think it suits me.
Don't you think so, Madame Spanier?
I think the hat is lovely.
A wee bit too big, maybe, for me.
That doesn't matter at all.
We've got to take a little bit of the crown, which is a little bit heavy, I must say, and
the feather must definitely be another color.
Push it down a little tiny bit on the right.
Well, that's it.
It's much better like that.
So, I'm going to order this one.
When can I have the hat?
Are you in a hurry for it?
Of course I am.
Spring comes in.
Mayte, Mayte, est-ce que vous croyez qu'on pourrait faire une spartrie pour Madame pour
après-demain?
The girl says that she thinks we can get it done the day after tomorrow.
When you wait two days, we have the shape made like that, and then after then we can
get on with it.
Once we've got the shape right, we can do it in two days for you.
Of course I can wait two days for such a lovely hat.
It's 3,600 miles from Balmans of Paris to Clines of New York on 14th Street and Union
Square.
But time and a little bit of competitive ingenuity have a way of stocking sales counters.
Clines is a sort of fashion cafeteria, noisy, shaggy, and crowded.
The aisles are narrow.
The counters are piled with merchandise, loudly marked by price.
Not very much like Balmans.
But you can get a hat much like Coquille, and at prices that even a very poor princess
can afford.
I'd like to show you our new Paris copy.
It's a big seller in white satin with a feather through it.
It's very attractive and very chick-dear.
You want to just take a look at it.
Could I get it for you?
Fine, I'd like to try it on.
Hey, Joanie, bring that white hat here, please.
Here it is.
Try it on.
I think you look very chick-in-it.
If you've got a new Easter outfit in order, top it off fine, dear.
Oh, I think it's darling, don't you?
Simply lovely.
But isn't it a little droopy?
A little big?
Oh, no, it's fine.
You can stitch that up in the back, dear, a little, and it'll look fine.
Why don't you try it on again, dear?
More back on your head and a little to the right.
That's it.
As much as you're smart and more chick like that.
Okay, I'll take it.
It's very chick, dear.
It fits wonderful, and you look like a dream in it.
By the way, can you send it?
No, I'm sorry, dear.
Well, I just thought...
Now, listen, dear, at this price, we can't afford to.
All right, okay, wrap it up.
I'll take it with me.
That'll be $10.95.
The span of three months between Christmas and Easter has been good to us.
It was a dismal and to many a sad Christmas, with our troops suffering great reverses in
Korea and on the run.
Our faith in our military leaders and in ourselves as a people was badly shaken.
Now it is Easter, and in keeping with all the traditions, there is time for hope and
reason for hope.
Today is Good Friday, and at Massive St. Patrick's Cathedral on New York's Fifth Avenue, 5,500
people within and uncounted thousands on the roped off streets beside the great church
listen to the choir and the services and pray.
And as it is there, so it is in other houses of worship across this most fortunate of all
lands.
From beneath the shadows of the Third Avenue elevated in the Bowery, a congregation of
forgotten souls sing of Easter and get a shave and a hot meal.
And out across the Rockies, in the great Mormon Tabernacle at Salt Lake City, there are the
last minute rehearsals for Easter services.
And out across the vast Pacific, on the Korean Peninsula, there is another kind of Easter
music rehearsal.
The organ is not like the mighty one at St. Patrick's or Salt Lake.
It is a plain GI issue, foot pump affair, which a chaplain's assistant pumps, and the
men of the 374 troop carrier group sing of the season and the hope.
In addition to all the deep religious significance of Easter, it marks the beginning of good
fighting weather.
It is a season suitable not only for hope, but for courage.
It was J.M.
Barry who said, courage is the thing.
All goes if courage goes.
We should thank our Creator three times daily for courage instead of for our bread, which
if we work is surely the one thing we have a right to claim of Him.
Be not merely courageous, but lighthearted and gay.
Courage, my children, and greet the unseen with a cheer.
Mr. Barry said something else appropriate to our position at a season when hope and
courage walk hand in hand.
He said, I am far from implying that even worse things than war may come to a state.
There is a form of anemia that is more rotting than even an unjust war.
The end will indeed have come to our courage and to us when we are afraid in dire mischance
to refer the final appeal to the arbitrament of arms.
I suppose all the lusty of our race, alive and dead, join hands on that.
You have just heard Program 15 in the CBS series, Hear It Now, a document for air based
on the week's news.
Hear It Now is edited and produced by Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly and the CBS
staff, which includes John Aaron, Edmund Scott, Jesse Zassmer, Irving Gitlin, and Joseph Werschwer.
Portions of the program originated at WTOP Washington, KMOX St. Louis, KSL Salt Lake
City, WBT Charlotte, North Carolina, KROY Sacramento, KCBS San Francisco, and the British
Broadcasting Corporation.
Combat recordings were made in Korea by CBS correspondent John Jefferson.
Edward R. Murrow can be heard over most of these CBS stations Monday through Friday at
7 45 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
This is Olin Tice speaking.
You don't have to be reminded, I'm sure, that there's a shooting war going on in Korea.
The United States Army needs your help in that war.
It needs the help of registered nurses between the ages of 21 and 45 who can qualify for
commissions as lieutenants and captains.
Those most desperately needed are general staff nurses for whom there are currently
more than 2,000 vacancies.
And here are a few other figures to show you how critical the nursing situation is.
There are over 40,000 combat casualties who need nursing care.
There are only 300 or so nurses now on active duty in Korea and only 4,000 here in the United
States.
You can plainly see the need.
And if you fit the Army qualifications as a nurse, volunteer or write today to the Office
of the Surgeon General, Department NAC in Washington, D.C.
This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System.