Mash Notes and Comment

    "Dear Mr. Coates:

    "I would like a little information concerning one of your television programs. 

    "Did you, or didn't you, interview Senator Kennedy some time ago and did he say that he wore a toupee?

    "Did he also say that he manufactures them and expects to pay for his campaign from what he earns in the business?

    "I made this statement to a friend of mine and she repeated it to her friend, who is up in the air about it.

    "She says that somebody started this rumor to make it tough for the Senator.

    "If I made a mistake I wish to correct it because I meant no harm.  I like Senator Kennedy very much and certainly wouldn't tell something that wasn't true.

    "Please tell me if I am right."  (Signed) Mrs. Mary Osborne, Pomona.

    –It's his own hair, lady.  Nobody would dare make a toupee like that.

::

     (Press Release)  "Actress Phyllis Standish overheard that if there is anything a nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it is another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standards of nonconformity!"  (Signed) Larry E. Levin & Associates, 1356 N Vine St., Hollywood.

    –That's what you get for eavesdropping, Big Ears!

::

     (Form Letter)  "Dear Subscriber:
    "Suspense!  It's important in a novel, exciting in a movie — but only confusing when it comes to bookkeeping. 

    "Two months ago we entered your subscription to Harper's and billed you accordingly.  But your bill, at this writing, remains unpaid.

    "Strange things can happen to old bills.  They make convenient bookmarks.  Folded, they balance an unsteady coffee table.  The backs are ideal for hasty notes to the mailman.

    "In the event your first bill was misplaced, we are enclosing another with this letter.

    "We would appreciate receiving your remittance.  The suspense is killing our bookkeeper."  (Signed) John Jay Hughes, Circulation Director, Harper's Magazine, New York City.

    –Well, don't try to pin the rap on me.  If I didn't kill him, some other deadbeat would.

::

    (From Letter) "A gentleman's guide to being a gentleman.

    "That's what this letter is.  And in it you'll also find an opportunity to subscribe to America's most exciting magazine for gentlemen at a positively roguish price:  one-half off.

    "The magazine?  What else but Esquire? . . ."  (Signed) Esquire Magazine, Boulder, Colo.
   
    –You call yourselves gentlemen?  That poor bookkeeper at Harper's — his body isn't even cold yet, and you're over here romancing me.

::

    "Dear Paul Coates,

    "My name is Oscar.  I'm an 11-year-old dog.

    "Can you do something for me?  I want to go to Africa.  I haven't got the money and it's too far to swim or walk.

    "My master Capt. E.R. Tobias, is in the Army, on his way to Africa now.  His wife is with him.  The Army wouldn't let me go on a jet with them, I can go on regular planes or boats.

    "That's my story.  All I want is to surprise my master.  I know he's grieving for me.  Not as much as I am grieving for him, though.

    "I can't eat.  I can't sleep.  I just sit at the front door and watch and hope.  Can you help me get to Africa?"  (Signed) Oscar, an 11-year-old dog.  c/o Mrs. F.Kammer, Capt. Tobias' mother, 8840 S Walnut Way, Whittier.

    –Oscar, that's a nice letter.  Good grasp of  syntax. And think of it — you're only 11 years old!
   

A Woman Pays, Pays and Pays for Nothing

    The word is blackmail, and you don't know what it means until it happens to you.

    Mrs. Anita Roddy-Eden Sutton said it happened to her on the third day following her marriage to actor John Sutton.  That was Feb. 24, 1957.

    She and Sutton were honeymooning at the St. Regis in New York when the phone in their suite rang.

    She lifted the receiver and the man's voice told her, "Good morning , Mrs. Manville.  How do you like being a bigamist?"  That was all the man said.  Then the phone went dead.

    "Who was that calling?"  the actor asked his bride.

    "Nobody," she stammered.  "It was a wrong number."

    But it wasn't.  It was a very right number.  Before her marriage to Sutton, Anita Roddy-Eden had been Tommy Manville's ninth wife.  Their 3 1/2 year union — which had been her first — ended in a Reno divorce in 1955.

     Anita hinted there were some possible irregularities.  That's what worried the new Mrs. Sutton.  There was, for example, the possibility that she hadn't fulfilled the six-week Nevada residence requirement — but she had stated in court at the time that she had.  There was a chance that she was guilty of perjury, as well as bigamy.

    This, the mysterious caller knew.  And he told her so when he phoned her again that night.

    "How would you like Mr. Sutton to find out?" he asked.

    The thought terrified her.  The caller apparently knew it would because he set a $10,000 price tag on his silence.  Mrs. Sutton laughed uneasily and asked where she would get that kind of money.  But the caller was too familiar with her financial status to fall for her bluff.  "You've got it," he said.

    She did.  And after a few more persuasive phone calls in the next couple of days, she stuck it in an envelope, wrote — according to instructions — the name "Mr. Forest" on it and left it at the hotel desk.

    She had been assured — as all blackmail victims are — that this would be the only payment she would be required to make. 

    Even at the price, she figured that she was getting off cheap, if the silence would save her new marriage and keep her out of trouble with the Nevada authorities.

     Yesterday, Mrs. Sutton recalled for me the strange emotions that tore her after that first $10,000 payment.

    "Whoever was blackmailing me knew an awful lot about me," she said.  "That's what bothered me most.  I'd look at my friends and wonder if they were implicated."

    Three months passed before the blackmailers contacted her again.  They wanted another ten grand.  After some persuasion, she paid a second time.

    But this didn't stop them.  They hit her again in July of '57 for $5,000 more, and in August twice, for $1,000 each time.  Total $27,000.

    "By then," she told me yesterday, "it was driving me half-crazy.  I'd devise little schemes to try to trip them up, to catch them.  But I never succeeded.  The only thing that stopped them was the fact that my husband and I went out of the country."

    The Suttons eventually returned to the U.S. and as the months passed her fears that the blackmailers would reappear diminished.  "Sometimes I'd go days, weeks, without thinking about them."

    But then, last December, her husband opened a note addressed to her which was mixed among a batch of Christmas cards.

    It was from the blackmailers, announcing that they were back — and when John Sutton confronted his wife with it she broke down and told him the whole story.

    Also the press.  That apparently cost her the sympathy of the district attorney in Reno, William J. Raggio.  He said inspection of the records failed to back up her statement of blackmail and irregularities in the divorce.

    "I can only assume her statement is insincere and issued for the purpose of obtaining publicity," he said, "especially in view of the fact the statements have been made to the press rather than to the officials concerned."

    In any event, Mrs. Sutton's $27,000 secret wasn't a secret anymore.

    "If you had the choice again . . .?"  I started.

    "If I had the choice again, I don't know," she answered.  "I guess I was a fool to pay them the $27,000.

    "But," Anita Roddy-Eden Sutton added, "it bought me three years of silence.  And they were very happy years."