Imperial Valley press., 1942-08-09
by
Peter
Edison

]
of Washington since last February,
when he burst on the capital screen
right at the moment when the Of
flee of Civilian Defense was going
through its worst fam dancing
troubles.
That's ali over now. and in the
meantime Mr. Douglas has been
saving a lot of wood for himself,
between making pictures. He took
six weeks off late in the winter to
do one job in Hollywood and has a
couple weeks more to do in fin
iShing up a second. The rest of
the time he has been in Washing
ton. He shared a house in George
town for a while, but gave that up
and now lives in hotel. The crowd
around the OCD headquarters say
he burns more midnight oil in his
office than almost any other exc
cutive.
His office is just another room
in what used to be a small suite
in the DUPONT Circle Apartments.
His staff is seven people, two in
New York, five i'm Washington,
including two assistants and three
secretaries and clerks. Everybody
gets paid except the boss, who
draws only $40 day subsistence,
when he works.
The Douglas bureau in OCD has
been rechristened from the $4.40
War Council of the Arts" to the
! humber and much more effective
two ts-including-taX title of vol
unteer Talents Unit" And if you
! have talents that can be put to
use to help your country win the
war, this is the place where they
can be put to work Conversely, If
you want talent, this is the place
to get it.
The list of major activities and
accomplishments of this Volunteer
Talents Unit in the past six months
since Mr.. Douglas took over, fills
several pages and it covers odd Jobs
done in the fields of writing, art and
entertainment.
Here are few typical exhibits:
For the Army Air Force, the
VTU lined up writer's to compose
slogans, write articles and even
fiction publicizing the flying SER
vice. 1t got people like Dorothy
Thompson, Vincent Sheehan,
Katherine Brush and Edna Fur
ber. Similar jobs we're done for
the Signal Corps.
1t talked Rodgers and Hart and
others into writing bombardier
songs.
For the OPA, the Douglas office
had Janet Flanner prepare speech
on price stabilization. This was
sent to state and local defense
councils for the use of local speak
ers.
For the Treasury's war bond cam
paign, volunteer talent wrote some
300 slogans, and prepared minute
man speeches.
Mary Roberts Rinehart J. 2.
Marquand, Elmer Davis and others
of that stripe wrote em articles
for our America" and Stephen
Vincent Benet wrote half-hour
script for a network broadcast on
the anniversary CT the German
book burning.
Whooping up holidays has been
one of the biggest activities OF the
volunteers. For the United Ma
tons celebration on June IA, 1t
was the Douglas office which lined
rp Eric Barnow to do a 15-minute
radio sketch for local production.
Maxwell Anderson prepared
pageant for local community use.
Nearly 10000 copies of these two
opuses were distributed
The Hollywood Writer'S Mobili-
zation Committee has kicked in
with a lot of this preparation oi
scenarios and scripts for local use,
too
Another theater effort has been
in preparing scripts for USO camp
shows.
Margaret Leech wrote speech
on Lincoln which Raymond Mas
sew delivered on Memorial day.
Foreign language writer's have
been lined up TO help with the
propaganda efforts of the Office
of War Information.
The art activities include organ
izing the preparation of displays
for the Pan American Child Con
gress. and conventions like the
American Medical Association, the
Lions and the KiWanis. Displays
of other kinds - posters, photo.
graphs, dioramas and such-haVe
gone into Pratt Institute cooper
Union. Carnegie Tech, Museum OF
Modern Art, San Francisco and
Cleveland Art Museums.
All of these activities are OF course
necessary to help win the war.
Lend-Lease aid includes not only
$1.4 billion worth of munitions, bul
also S84l millionS of foods, S8lS
millions of machinery and $685.
million worth of service, another
SIG billion miscellaneous for total
of over SIS billion up TO June 30
Winter service coats for air and
ground force officers are to be OF