Word: belle
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...that he frequently lost control of them. A succession of "Wherryisms" made him the Sam Goldwyn of Capitol Hill. He once promised another Senator "opple amportunity" to make a speech, called Oregon's Junior Senator Wayne Morse "the distinguished Senator from Junior." Other Wherryisms: "Chief Joints of Staff," "bell door ringer...
...world circulation standards, DeWitt Wallace, the Digest's founder, owner and boss, is the most successful editor in history. Wallace and his wife, Lila Bell Wallace, the Digest's co-editor, between them seem to have discovered a magic formula. What...
...Formula. Wally ("I gave him that name," says Lila Bell, "and allow others to use it") claims that there is no hard & fast recipe. Says he: "I simply hunt for things that interest me, and if they do, I print them." One of his frequent contributors, Author Louis Bromfield, puts it differently. He thinks the magazine's main appeal is to "intellectual mediocrity" and that Wallace's own "strictly average" mind "completely reflects the mentality of his readers," who like the Digest because "it requires no thought or perception...
Since Wallace believed that the magazine's principal appeal would be to women, he headed the list of editors with "Lila Bell Acheson," and added, along with his own, the names of two women who had nothing to do with the magazine. For an office, he rented a basement room under a speakeasy at 1 Minetta Lane, in Greenwich Village. When the first issue of 5,000 copies arrived from the Pittsburgh printer, Wallace hired barflies from the speakeasy to help him and Lila wrap and address them. They piled the mail sacks into a taxicab, took them...
...future was on them before they knew it. The mail poured in from subscribers, bringing ecstatic testimonials. Wrote "L.M.W." from Pennsylvania: "Its contents seem like nuggets of gold." "The Reader's Digest," announced Editor Lila Bell Acheson in the second issue, "is successful beyond all anticipations." The fifth month brought a crisis; the Digest couldn't pay the printer, and Wallace was plunged in gloom. At first Lila was crushed by these moods, which would "just descend on him like a black cloud. It was all new to me-it just isn't in my nature...