The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-04-29
PORTRAIT or HAM

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 Vari0uB people have offered req sons on why Lindbergh acts the way he does. Walter Lippmann called him naive A reporter. sketching his career, pointed out that Lindbergh schemes out every thing he does He picks his spots and figures what his own reward will be The President saw nothing new in Colonel Lindbergh's loudmouthing =. There were lots ot his kind during the Civil War, MT. Roosevelt said, being defeatist on the North =. There were more of them when Washington was starving at Valley Forge sneering at the Colonies chances Dor- othy Thompson wasted no wordage on Lindbergh. She styled him a "pro-Nazi."
 Your correspondent heaves in his two cents worth. Lindbergh is a ham And so Is his act (. Anybody who knows his Times Square sector can spot a ham at first sight The symptoms are palmer than Durante's nose |. Try to find somebody to compare Lindbergh with and the first thing that comes to mind is a faded actor trying to fight his way back to the drama pages and the payrolls |. He won't be happy until he has peo- pie looking at him and listening to him. Hams can't help 1t, and neither can Lindbergh The spotlight sheds a poison and nobody has found cure for 1t yet.
 Yes. Charlie Lindbergh is e big ham,
 If he were back in Europe, they'd be rationing him.
 Llndbergh Is like an actor who has scored one terrific hit. That Att lantic flight was something to cheer. He was an overnight hero He was adored on all the continents. He came home to take bows and parades and pages of praise When he found himself rich as well as famous-set financially--he gave the lodgnetty brushoff to the re- porters All of a sudden he was hard to get, and that's as familiar a gesture in the ham as the strut .. Also Lindbergh played King He had his favorites among the re- porters, the boys who played his game, and he slipped them exclu- sives He cultivated the man. ner of one who detested publicity. Just the same his exclusives landed where they caught the most eyes.
 Lindbergh went to England to live. He wanted to hide out, he pleaded, from the bothersome reporters -. He had earned privacy. He was striving for this privacy, of course, when he took public slam at the Soviet air forces. That's just the sort of thing the headline writers would ignore, you know .. Again. when he climbed a Ratzi rostrum and lot Hitler's buddies pin a medal on h!m, everybody knew he was shrinking away from the spotlight.
 You never saw guy who de- toured Into so many nests of re- porters on his way to obscurity.
 He came back to America, still insisting that what he wanted from our dailies was no attention. The press played him dirty trick. They believed him Well, bless my soul, who was this coming at you from the soapboxes and the microphones but the celebrated publicity evader, Col. Lindbergh! Here he was, offering more angles on how to fix up the world than we got from Huey Long . . The world wasn't opera ting on Lindbergh's terms, you sec, and he wanted 1t changed to suit.
 Isn't 1t true that when a ham actor slips from popularity it's never he that's wrong - always show busi- ness?
 When Lindbergh launched his pop-offs, traces of his old popularity clung to him The papers gave him respectful attention. But soon editors tumbled that he was talk ing sensation, not sense. They thought: "Dear-odear, here's an- other space grabber." So they told him to pipe down and be Q good boy :. They had read Hitler's book, too, and they were wise to the routine that no matter what YOU say, if you say 1t often enough and lough enough, 1t creeps into the simpler and simpleton minds.
 When Q ham of the cinema world gets pushed off the big time he