Word: tammen
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Champa Street. For four decades, Publisher Frederick G. Bonfils and his crony H. H. Tammen, a onetime barkeep, had run the paper like a circus, built circulation with spectacular outdoor shows, cheap insurance tie-ins, prizes for every want ad. The Post earned a million dollars a year, and put little of it into improving its contents...
...technique was far subtler than Viskniskki's. When Hoyt moved into Bonfils & Tammen's famous "red room" at the Post, no screaming headlines but a modest front-page story recorded his arrival. Staffers met Hoyt and his wife at a city-room reception, liked them on sight. Muttered one old hand: "It's like a warm breath of spring in an icebox...
...Look Now. The Post's rambunctious history began one day in 1895 when blue-eyed, roly-poly Harry Tammen, bartender at Denver's Windsor Hotel, strolled into the littered city room of the old Evening Post. At his side was a new-found friend, swarthy, wax-mustached Frederick. Gilmer Bonfils (pronounced bonn-fees), a dashing promoter who had just cleaned up $800,000 in the notorious "Little Louisiana" lottery. To weary Postmen playing poker, Harry Tammen drawled: "Don't let us disturb you but we've just taken over this paper...
...take-over was breathless. For decades Bonfils & Tammen stirred up a brand of journalistic dust in Denver's rarefied air which made Hearst look stuffy. They raked the town for every bit of scandal, labeled their sheet "Your Big Brother, champion of every good, pure, noble, holy and righteous cause." Sample causes: crusades against Governors, mudslinging matches with Senators, bullyragging attacks on advertisers, lavish parties for children, sick dogs and horses...
...charged - but never proved in court - that Bonfils took $250,000 from Oilman Harry F. Sinclair to keep quiet about the Teapot Dome scandal, but such hush money would have been mere pin money to him. Before he died in 1933 (nine years after Tammen's death), he boasted that his enterprises, which ranged from mining schemes to a burlesque house, had brought him $60 million...