Writing Rights

Ray
Bradbury, a home-town boy who has become one of the nation's most
prolific authors of realistic fantasy and who has seen many of his
story ideas stolen without payment, believes firmly that writers should
fight for their copyrights.

One time he sold a story to the
Saturday Evening Post titled, "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms." It was
about a lonely dinosaur-like creature which heard a sound it believed
was another dinosaur's mating call. When it discovered that the sound
was merely a foghorn it became enraged and destroyed the offending
lighthouse.

A year after the story appeared Ray was summoned by
a film producer who'd heard he was a specialist in such matters and
wanted him to adapt the story for a movie. The producer had forgotten
where he'd lifted it and didn't realize he'd called in the original
author. A settlement was made.

ANOTHER TIME Ray
discovered that a publisher of horror comics was stealing his stuff,
some of it word for word. he consulted a lawyer, who wanted a $1,000
retainer to handle the case.

Not having $1,000 to spare, Ray
instead wrote a friendly letter to the comic book publisher
congratulating him on the vivid and graphic quality of his books and
mentioning incidentally in the last paragraph that apparently he'd been
so busy he'd neglected to send Ray the usual author's check.

He
not only received it but made a deal giving the publisher exclusive
rights to some of his other stories. Proving it doesn't pay to get too
angry.

::

WHEN HE ISN'T playing
cowboys outside, Don, 6, is watching cowboys on TV. The other day he
came into the kitchen after a hard day in an imaginary saddle and, JimCritchfield reports, said to his mother, "Ah'm a stranger in town, ma'm. Do you happen to know where ah could find a cooky?"

::

ANIMAL CRACKERS

Monkeys and mice high in the sky
Perhaps, yet, a zoo bye and bye.

–JOSEPH P. KRENGEL

::

NORTH YOUNG was playing table tennis the other day with A. Blinken
Brigade, Malibu soldier of fortune, and while trying to return a wild
service as it ricocheted from the mast of a passing schooner, Blink,
breathing hard, swallowed the ball.

North rushed him to a hospital, where Dr. Orville Sharpe Culery, the noted surgeon, ordered him immediately into the operating room.

After
a spinal had been administered, Dr. Cutlery made an incision over the
pit of the stomach, another on the left and a third far to the right.
As he continued making incisions Blink, who'd insisted on watching the
operation, asked in some concern, "Doc, why are you making so many
incisions?"

"Can't help it," the famous surgeon replied. "That's the way the ball bounces."

::

IT CAN BE assumed that life is now back to normal in the Melrose — Western Ave. sector, but things were really roaring for a few days.

The activity started, reports Mrs. Lilian Nedwick, apartment house manager, with the untimely death of one of her tenants, Ward Spiva, a prop man, as the result of a fall.

Arrangements
were made to ship his body to Arkansas, and a group of friends gathered
at an appointed hour in a funeral parlor for a final good-by.

Somehow, the farewelling
became very emotional and before long a full-scale wake was in
progress. After a time the mourners, their numbers constantly swelled
by newcomers, proceeded in a four-car procession to the Bobbin Inn,
then to Hal's Place, then elsewhere and elsewhere.

At one point
three neighborhood liquor stores closed so the employees could put in a
few good words for old Ward. Certainly no higher tribute can be paid.

It was agreed that no one has ever had a finer sendoff.

::

MISCELLANY — A lady named Jennie who saw "The Hound of the Baskervilles" on TV delighted her friends by malaproping that she'd seen "The Dogs of Barkersville" … What a beating Gon Wong, listed in the central telephone directory, must take.