The Waterbury Democrat., 1937-06-11

depicting Amer r., rc,.n.-,. ica in tears
 over the loss of one of its greatest cultural assets; no leading man, no author, no camera man, no ex- husband, no potential husband threw himself into the grave screaming demands that he be covered up with earth beside the departed; and, most unusual, there was no burning pyre crammed with fan-mail suttees to light Miss Harlow to her last rest ing place. In so many words Miss Harlow, who from all reports was a generous, kindly soul and had no illusions about her talents as an actress, played dirty trick on the moving picture industry" when she left behind her mother who refused to stage a super -collossal funeral blowout.
 What a Shame!
 What chance she cheated the fourth largest business in the world out of "The Panther Woman of the Pickering Films" planted without so much as a panther cub being slaughtered at the grave side! The Princess of Platinum Blondiness inferred without weep ing cohorts of initiative platinum blondes tearing out their hair all along Hollywood boulevard and doing strip-tease version of the Dance of Death to lend color to the melancholy occasion! The girl who must have been gold mine to the hair dyers being per- mitted to be put where all must follow without at least a corpo- rals guard of "tonsorialists" on hand to say goodbye to their meal ticket. What is the business com ing to? It was not so when Ru- dolph Valentino was being walked at Frank Campbells "mortuary cathedral" some years ago. Well do I remember that bloodcurdling exhibition of press-agcnt efffront- cry.
 What a Wake!
 Poor Valentino's wake was staged with all the claborateness of detail that accompanies the personal appearance of motion picture star on the stage of a theater. The only thing that did not go with it was a clambake. There was a carefully stage mob of admirers which tore into the Campbell "basilica" to view the remains: wrecking the furniture; smashing t 2 priceless CD porcc- lain urns in the reception room; tearing the priceless CD oriental rugs to shreds for souvenirs; yell- ing; fighting; roaring out their fictitious grief in such volume that the elevated trains passing the section might as well have been silent shadows ill the night; leav- ing behind them on their grief stricken exit scene of Wrcckage which would have done credit to Attila and his Huns; all the time day and night, a showing, pushing, clothes -snatching horde fighting squadrons of weary policemen strung from Columbus Circle to Seventy Second Street and trying to battle its frantic way to the center of the show. The orgy was described as a tribute from the public to its idol. And it was not until the Valentino estate was set tied that the brutal truth was dis closed that the whole thing was paid for and that the hcartbrokcn mournerS were largely recruited from the ranks of stage "supcrs" experienced in such spectacles. But, judged by motion picture standards 1t was an "extra-stu- pendous" production whose cost could properly be charged of as advertising for Valentino films ready for re-eXhibition.
 Triumph of Genius
 The aay the curtain was rung down on Valentines last public appearance Gertrude Ederle made her triumphal return from swim ming the English Channel. Miss Ederle's daddy ran butcher shop on Columbus Avenue adjacent to the site of Camp5ell's Waking