Word: vanderbilt
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High Finance. Dapper Manchester Boddy, 51, acquired the News in 1926 on what he calls a "borrowed shoestring." Boddy was general manager of the Los Angeles Times's book-publishing department, then he heard about the Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News. Published by Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr., it was then (1926) the last word in newspaper daffiness (retouch artists used to put shirts on pictures of hairy-chested wrestlers to meet the Vanderbilt standards of wholesomeness). The News was losing $30,000 a month, ultimately landed in bankruptcy court...
Boddy had no money; he did have a yen. First he went to Vanderbilt, got him to cancel a $1,000,000 note owed him by the News. Then Boddy borrowed (from a private loan company) $100,000 with which to acquire controlling interest in the News. He used the News itself as collateral. If the News failed to show a profit in six months, the loan company was to take over. Boddy worked night & day to improve the six-column ("But it's not a tabloid") paper...
...interview at Red Bank, N.J. (near the Army camp where her husband now works) Gloria Vanderbilt di Cicco explained, "I was never proud of being a Vanderbilt. If I weren't so happy now, I might hate them [her mother and aunt fought over her custody when she was a tot]. They never thought of what they were doing to me. . . . Every time I was hurt or lonely ... I wished I had a father living and a mother who loved him and loved me. ... I kept saying to myself, 'when I grow up I'll marry...
Dinah explains her throaty singing style by saying that blues are "fundamental, instinctive." She has two other explanations: 1) her old Southern mammy exposed her at an early age to Negro spirituals; 2) her voice changed from soprano to contralto due to cheerleading at Vanderbilt University...
...After Vanderbilt, the best job Dinah could get in Manhattan was as an unpaid singer on a local radio station. Months later, on a bleak New Year's Eve when she had got down to her last nickel, she almost committed suicide...