The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-07-22
PORTRAIT OF A MAN CATCHING
 A TRAIN

The sudden death of John An derson, drama critic for the Jornal- American, will undoubtedly inspire the familiar comment at The Play ers' Club: Always the wrong one" He was good critic for lots of req sons, but best of all because he was readable. He had wit, he had style, and he had good slugging indig- nation for the phopy and the shoddy. But no matter how tough he got, he always had the respect of show people. He wouldn't have been first rater all those years II he hadn't it .. John came onto the aisles with the band of gifted re- viewers who put an end to the Old was contemporaneous with Haywood Broun, Alexander Woolcott, Percy Hammond (who all preceded him to Heaven). That was the bunch who made a fool out of the platitude that destructive critic is bad for the drama. They gave the theater more life than 1t ever got from their hecklers. Lots and lots of times the showmen will wish for their likes back on the aisles John wrote a thousand things that are still quoted, but the onet his fan treasurers most was his comment on a play that had an actress con- plaining for three acts about all her ailments. q Sympathized," wrote John. T wasn't feeling very well myself"
 Cartoonist Alain convulses you with a drawing of a Jap alibi-ing a couple of lickings in the offing. Having junked Attu as "of little value," he lies, he goes on to re- port "our experts are re-examining the strategic value of Kiska and Bougainville" It's a howl, but the nefarious Jap is just talking like too much of the rest of the world. Everybody is playing a weird word game, the idea being to. see how many words you can pack into sentence and make them mean ex- actly the opposite of what the dic- tionary says they mean ,. It doesn't
 
 has softened up for the speakers.
 The device is older than Hitler, but nobody ever got so much profit out of it. He started out by trans lating the Treaty of Versailles into mobese, and got the square heads to feeling picked on He built on that and claimed the German army wasn't pounded to a pulp in the field, but broke a shoelace during an attack and was kicked in the rear when it stopped over to fix it .. He couldn't make that speech around the graveyards, because somebody with sense might ask how so many Boche happened to get killed during the victories.
 That kind of gibberish was nice red meat for the home grown krauts, but Hitler had to have hoodWink ing tale for the rest of the world. So every time he did something that carried the NaZi brand of vicious ness, the worst kind, he claimed it was to prevent Communism" =. In those years Communism was & ready made scare, largely because the Commies in all the lands were such blunderers. The world was full of people who got as mad as bulls when you waved Red at them. The shady set in all the lands found it useful to cover up their sWindles. Nothing was too fantastic to serve as a club against the Bolo It's surprise that Benny Woodall didn't plead that he spent the night where he shouldn't have, lying in wait for the Red Menace. He was old fashioned enough to say he was waiting for bus.
 The old "professor" epithet, which had a brief vogue in the Thirties, has been dusted off for use as a stone. Those who have studied govt as a science instead of via the time honored methods of bossism, ward heeling and ballot-box stuffing, are derided as professors" theorists and Hong hairs. Even the wordage is dated The callers have re- vived, too, the old uproar that the govt needs businessmen, who know how to meet payroll, etc .. And yet, for all their scorn for the theorists (accusing some of eating with forks), many had an admira- ton for Hitler before, finally. he