Word: pegged
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...humid humor, Westbrook Pegler, who writes for Hearst, teed off on Ed ("Little Old New York") Sullivan, who writes for the tabloid New York Daily News. One of Ed's columns had caught Peg's bloodshot eye. It "consisted of an open letter to his secretary," wrote Pegler. "This was an unusual device. Usually his secretary writes to him and in this way is able to congratulate him on remarkable feats of exclusive journalism and prophecy and thank him for kindnesses to others which he might not have the indelicacy to mention, although modesty is not his worst...
...obtuse," wrote Peg, "so I assume that this refers to some news [Sinatra's meeting with Panderer Lucky Luciano] which deviated from the laudatory and purposely rapturous trash which had become standard Sinatra publicity as turned in by the saloon, movie, radio and gambling house journalists...
...Sullivan has long seemed to me to be willing to go to the gutter to find a hero." To prove it, Peg unwrapped a 1929 Sullivan column eulogizing Frank Marlow, a murdered Manhattan mobster ("Goodbye, Frank, and God bless you."). Pegler's verdict on Sullivan: "A prideful intimacy with many of the worst gangsters ... a professional name-dropper, a grown-up but still callow Saturday night sport...
...Peg O' My Heart was grown in the same fertile Tin Pan Alley patch as Dardanella, Fifty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong, Blue Is the Night, Ireland Must Be Heaven, and Come, Josephine, in My Flying Machine. But Peg O' My Heart grew more slowly than Fred Fisher's other hits, did not reach full bloom until the doughboys came home whistling...
...first and most unabashed tune thieves, once told Movie-man Irving Thalberg, "When you buy me, you're buying Chopin, Liszt and Mozart. You're getting the very best." His most successful steal was Chasing Rainbows from Chopin's Fantasie-Impromptu. He got the title for Peg O' My Heart from the play (1912) starring Laurette Taylor, which had been a hit before Fisher borrowed its well-plugged name for his song. Fisher once sued Jerome Kern, accusing him of stealing the theme of his Kalula from the rumbling bass part of Dardanella. The jury awarded...