Evening star., 1952-11-20
On the Air
On the Air
Beverly Hills Life Is Fine
Before the Morning Paper
By Harry Macarthur

OJ t1oIty
It only family resembled sum-
mertime, but the livin' was easy
at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The
CHS press department had very
little trouble. however, getting rid
of its weekend party guests on
Tuesday morning. One look at the
front page of the Los Angeles
Times, a conservative newspaper
by standards in force out there
sent TV reporters scurrying for
the quickest plane aimed toward
the sane East.
The newsmen had been trans
ported to Los Angeles on one of
those cross-country junkets, this
one designed to show off the new
CHS 'Television City in Holly
wood. They Cor most of them)
had attended the ceremony on a
stormy, rainy Saturday morning
when the new factory" was made
official. This was accomplished
when Mayor Fletcher Bowron,
flanked by Zsa Zsa Gabor and CHS
Television President j. L. Van
Volkenburg, applied a pair OF
shears (solid gold, of course) to a
ribbon.
The dedication was followed by
a week end that was long and
luxurious and now it was over.
It began just family to seem like
a good idea to stay on for a few
days. The sun was warm and the
smog was only beginning to gather
in air cleaned by rain (unseaSon-
able rain, that isl. The prospect
of lingering for awhile was not
completely unattractive, even II it
meant work. There certainly were
stories about TV and its Holly
wood people to which man could
legitimately assign himself.
Maybe some one slipped some
powdered lotus leaves into the
morning orange juice. Despite
the free -for-all traffic, despite the
smog, despite the remoteness from
reality, despite the vast phoni-
ness on all sides, there seemed
some attractive aspects OF life
in Beverly Hills. Food. drink and
glamorous company in plush SUR
roundings were easily available.
A man could sit in the sun or
sit in the Polo Lounge. haunt OF
movie folk, legitimate and phoney.
He could, in fact, luxuriate and
be as phoney as any one else in
the place. Waiter, scotch-on-the-
rocks and a telephone. Opera
tor, get me New York. What?
Charge it to bungalow GA.
Then the Los Angeles Times
came out as usual on Tuesday
morning and caught every ones
eye. The Truman-Eisenhower
meeting that day did make Page
One, all right. So did the H
bomb and the series of Flying
Boxcar crashes. But they were
not the big news which made the
screaming double-banner head
line splashed eight columns across
the top of the page. In letters
more than an inch high 1t
shouted:
MICKEY ROONEY, MODEL
IN LAS VEGAS ELOPEMENT.
You wouldn't see a more pre-
cipitous exodus of Eastern news
papermen if a platoon of trigger
happy skunks marched on New
York and established a beach,
head at Bleecks.
\ X
It may pain CHS to hear about
it, but the trip east provided the
best show of the entire jaunt,
thanks to United Air Lines. This
is an airline which bellies the term
common carrier" It is an un-
common carrier If there ever was
one.
United operates with fullest
realization that air travel, while
fast and comfortable, is one of the
dullest enterprises modern man
subjects himself to. It combats
boredom at every opportunity.
This week, for instance, we swing
out over the Pacific for a wide
turn into view of unbelievably