PAGE SEVEN
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BROADWAY AND MAIN STREET
Another Kind of Courage Has
It All Over Standard Heroics
By BILLY ROSE
Recently, a doctor in Maine sent me a story about a coura-
geous kid and, unless I'm getting soft in the heart, it’s the most
touching tale of heroism I've come across in a long time... .
Some time ago, the medico got
a hurry-up telephone call to come
out to a small summer camp 20 miles west of Bangor. There, half an
hour later, he examined a six-year-old girl and found that one of her
legs was broken and that she had lost a lot of blood from a gash in her
thigh.
The story, as he got.it from the
mother, was that the girl and her
brother, aged 7, _.
had gotten into the
loft of an abandoned
barn and, when a
rotted plank gave
way, she had fall-
i en, broken her leg
and ripped her
thigh on a piece
of rusty farm ma-
chinery. i
As the doctor was Billy Rose
| cauterizing the cut
{and setting the leg, the boy—his
{name was _Pete—kept watching
{ from the doorway with worried in-
| terest.
“Is Molly going to be all right?”
he asked when the splints were
in place.
“‘She’s lost a lot of blood,” said
the doctor, ‘but if she gets past
the crisis tonight, everything will
be okay.”
“What's a crisis?”
“It’s—well, I guess it’s the time
| when a person is sickest.”
“When people lose a lot of blood,
do they die?”
“Sometimes. You see, the heart
needs a certain amount to keep
going. In a way, it’s like the motor
of a car—it stops running if it
doesn’t get gasoline.’
“I see,” said Pete.
* . *
LATER THAT NIGHT, the little
girl’s pulse began to slow up.
“I'm afraid your daughter needs
an immediate transfusion,’ the doc-.
tor told the father, ‘but there's a
| complication. She has an unusual
type of blood, and I doubt whether
the blood bank in Bangor has it in
stock.”
“Her brother has the same type,”
said the father. “I know, because
the pediatrician who examined the
kids last year told me so. . . .”
Pete looked startled a minute
later when bis dad asked him if
he would give up a cup of blood
to help bis sister get well.
“How can 17” the boy asked.
‘“The doctor does it with a little
rubber tube.”
‘Can I think about it?’
“Sure,” said the father, ‘but don’t
take too long.”
Pete went to his room, and his
parents heard him close the door.
Five minutes later, he was back,
looking very earnest. ‘All right,”
he said.
» » .
WHEN IT WAS over, the doctor
bandaged the boy’s arm and told
him to lie down and take it easy. .#
But instead, the kid went out on the
porch and, when his father found
him there at midnight, his face was
white and his fingers were clenched.
‘““What’s the matter, Pete?”
“Oh, nothing,” said the boy.
“Look here,” said his father.
‘“There’s something going on in that
head of yours. What is it?”
“1 was wondering bow long it -
will take”
“How long will what take?”
“How long it will take me to
die.”
“To do what?” \
“To die,” repeated the boy. “It's
like the doctor said—when there
isn’t. enough blood, the motor
stops running.” :
‘I see,” said the father. “When
you gave your sister a cup of blood,
vou figured you were going to die
yourself.”
“Sure,” said Pete. ‘“That’s why
I wanted to think it over.”
EE
~ Condensed from Time
A Rose that Rose
Around the corner in the Bronx
scuttled a wild-eyed runt. His tiny
head was ducked between high,
skinny shoulders, his nose was
bleeding, and he sobbed as he ran,
After him pounded three bigger
boys. One by one they gave up the
chase; the runt ran too fast. He is
running still.
In his 47 years, Billy Rose had
sprinted breathlessly from grinding
poverty to easeful wealth, He ran
first from a career as a speed-
champion stenographer to a career
as one of the most successful
songwriters in Tin Pan Alley his-
tory. He ran on to fortune and
fame as a night-club proprietor and
one of the greatest showmen of
his time. As a columnist (at roughly
$52,000 a year) he is currently
showing impressive stamina and
speed in a fiercly competitive
branch of journalism, After only
nine months of newspaper distri-
bution, his ‘Pitching Horseshoes”
has landed in some 175 papers, He
expects to close a deal sewing up
3000 weekly newspapers,
He works at least 14 hours a
| day. About ten he gets up, bathes,
shaves and starts the day’s business
at his three bedroom phones, He
rarely reaches the office before 2
p.m., frequently drifts home from
a nightclub after 3 am, “My only
exercise,” he once jeered content-
edly, “ is a brisk walk to the bath-
room.”
That is life fashioned for him-
self by William Samuel Rosenberg,
born in 1899 on a kitchen table on
Manhattan’s Lower East Side. His
father was a peddler who would
rather have been a poet.
In slum neighborhoods the runt
gets picked on. “I had to fight to
stay alive,” Billy recalls, “ and I
always lost.” But one day he came
back with a heavy lock dangling at
the end of a strap, He had knocked
out two of his attackers and the
rest beat it. Billy learned the les-
son: plainly, all .men are not cre-
ated equal—but there are equal-
izers. 2
Buck Hunt. The greatest equal-
izer, Billy soon found, was money,
Says he: “I spent the first 40 years
of my life in the buck hunt.” Just
before grammar-school graduation,
Billy desperately wanted a new
suit. Where could he get the $5?
While he was wondering, the school
offered a $5 prize for the best
English composition, Billy won it
with a description of the emotions
of a boy running. “I realized then,”
says Billy, ‘“ that the only guy this
razz-ma-tazz world would pay was
a specialist.”
A year later young Mr, Rosen-
berg was a specialist—and ‘making
$50 a week after school. By de-
termined practice he had become
a crack stenographer. John R.
Gregg, whose shorthand system
Billy used, gave him a job as a
demonstrator, Soon Rose could take
280 words a minute, real champ
form. When he quit high school, in
his third year, he was making as
much as $200 a week from his
shorthand.
What Makes Billy Run?
Way to the Top. When the United
States went to war, Billy went to
work for Bernard Baruch’s War In-
dustries Board at $1800 a year.
Soon he began spending nights at
Baruch’s house, taking dictation
from the great man himself. The
year in Washington was. decisive
for Billy’s career, “ I saw big men.
They talked tough, but they talked
from information, I decided I
wanted to be like them.”
Back in New York after the war,
Billy met some songwriters, They
looked to him like “a buncha
dumb-heads”—until he was told
they made 40 and 50 grand a year,
“Just like that”, says Rose, “I|de-
cided that this was the grift for
me.”
Billy picked up the art of song-
writing in his own brash but meth-
odical way. He spent three months,
nine hours a day, in the New York
Public Library dissecting hit songs
of the previous 30 years, Of the
“silly-syllable” songs, for example,
Billy discovered that those built
around the double-o sound were
the most successful. On this prin-
ciple he carefully constructed “Bar-
ney Google” (‘with the goo goo
googly eyes’). It was. a smash hit.
His songs that year made more
than $60,000, In the next eight
years, following his formulas, he
wrote more than 300 songs. Forty
were hits, His songs still bring him
about $18,000 a year.
Billy now shortened his name
and began to gild the Rose, He ac-
quired a fancy flat, a new ward-
robe, a valet. In 1927 he met Fanny
Brice and wrote her a vaudeville
act. Two years later they were
married. Fanny had long been
Broadway's leading comedienne; to
her flock of friends, Billy was just
“Mr. Brice”. Billy began looking
around for an equalizer, In 1930
he decided to become a Broadway
producer.
Bantan Barnum, Billy Rose's sky-
rocket career as a showman began
with = a miserable fizzle called
“Corned Beef & Roses. Desperately
he rewrote it, renamed it “Sweét
& Low”. Though it had Fanny
Brice in some of the original Baby
Snooks routines, it thudded again.
Bill rewrote the show a second
time, renamed it “Crazy Quilt” and
took it on the road. It played to
packed houses and in nine months
he made $250,000 clear profit.
During prohibition Billy estab-
lished the Backstage Club, a little
“speak” which his bingo-bango-
bungo type @f shows made popular.
Just after repeal he was hired by
an underworld syndicate, backed by
some of the Brooklyn Beer Gang,
to run a big Broadway night called
the Casino de Paree. He revolu-
tionized - the night club business
with his plan to attract the masses:
crowd them together—they’ll com-
municate the excitement through
their elbows; keep the prices rea-
sonable, the liquor good and the
food edible; make the acts loud
enough to outshout the customers
and short enough to give them a-
chance to drink up. i
Billy and the Beer Gang ‘‘separ-
ated in 1934. In parting Billy rashly
(Continued on Page Eight)