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The Pittsburgh Press from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 19

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Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
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By Fred Othman JUNE The Pittsburgh Press Tub Thumpers WASHINGTON Senator Harry F. Byrd, Virginia Democrat, wasn't so much worried about the two gents the Economic Co-operation Administration sent to Burma to study elephants. What pained him was the fact that MAT UB1 1 a a a to 13 15 IS IT 18 19 20 21 22 23 25 36 27 20 30 31 I aa I 1 2 3 4 6 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 134 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24252627fesl29i30 rau uei i a a a a 1 10 14 15 1 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 34 25 27 38 39 30 PAGE 19 THURSDAY, JUNE 21, 1951 SECOND SECTION une 01 tne tnousands of Federal press agents sat down at his hot typewriter and wrote a piece about this ponderous research. It was mimeographed and sent to editors, reporters, and fellows like me. The Senator said this dispatch quoted our experts as discovering that elephants don't Tike to work in the hot sun.

He then offered an amend ment cutting the number of governmental tub 4. Billie Scheible Swindled by Count Lustig By FRANK SECKLER As told to Wendy and Everett Martin I have been asked many times whom I consider the master criminal of them all. I can always answer without hesitation, for I have no doubts. He was Robert V. Miller, alias Victor Miller, alias mumpers by 25 per cent and the other gentlemen lined up enthusiastically to approve it.

The vote was 62 to 10. This indicates that Senators don't like publicity agents. Best Friends Drum Beaters Contents of my own wastebasket should be cut down by 25 per cent and for that I ought to be grateful. But some of my best friends are drum beaters for the Government. For them the ones who still have jobs I have some advice: The highest pressure press agent I ever knew was in Hollywood.

He made a point of advertising the movie cuties in numerous ingenious ways, such as having them ride down Los Angeles' main street on white horses, like Lady Godiva, with costumes to match. This attracted considerable interest, but my man always got himself into the story, too. Take the time the equestriennes appeared In nothing but their own blond hair: Their publicist managed to get himself arrested on charges of exposing too many goose pimples. The news was more about him than the ladies who employed him. Tusk for Johnny NEW YORK The late John Sorrells was the greatest man I ever knew, in most respects, and I have waited several years since his death to do a piece about him.

The excuse is only that I am leaving for WtJlr III 9 I i S3 Fourth of Series Count Victor Lustig. Here was a man whose career was so fabulous its details sound like fiction. was ruthless, i lligent, per sonable. He never missed. That's where the Federal publicists have failed miserably.

They have been so busy writing pieces about how smart are their boss bureaucrats that they never got around to mentioning themselves. Fact is, Senator Byrd and the other economizers don't even know how many publicity agents the government has on the payrolls. Senator Kenneth S. Wherry, Nebraska Republican, said the estimates ran from 4000 men to 20,000. They write handouts for the papers (which seldom use 'em), produce movies, write radio scripts and even now are tackling tv to tell the people what wonders their own bureaus are performing.

The Hoover Commission estimates they cost the taxpayers 100 million dollars a year. Horrid Example Senator after Senator said he didn't mind an agency having a man on tap to answer questions, or even to put out information on accomplishments. "But what I object to is things like this," said Senator Frank Carlson, Kansas Republican, waving a news release from the Marine Corps. He read It aloud. It seemed to be a feature story about one newly arrived Marine, in Korea saying to another, "Hello, His friend replied, "dammit, man, don't call me corporal.

The Chinks are looking for noncommissioned officers." End story. Only defender of the drum beaters was Senator Clinton P. Anderson, New Mexico Democrat who mentioned an Agriculture Department treatise on fleas, which previously had caused guffaws in the Senate. That flea pamphlet saved the lives of countless soldiers in North Africa, he said. He urged that his cohorts treat the press agents gently.

Only nine lawgivers agreed with him. Moral, publicity agents, is simple. When you're making friends and influencing people, you ought to include the U. S. Senate.

By Robert C. Ruark He sternly forbade me to do any work outside the column and then confessed he learned to write for newspapers by selling popular short stories. He was a former fullback and looked like one in miniature. When the mood struck him he was meaner than a snake and would take both sides of an argument just for fun. He was the only man I ever knew who could be jovially surly, or cruelly gentle.

He wrote a textbook on how newspapers should be run when he was a comparative youngster, and it is still a classic of the trade today. Yet he would violate his own tenets if the situation asked for it, and he had an eye for the informal unusual that makes great news. Tossed Off Snort He was as meek as a dead dove on demand and stone hard the next minute. His curiosity was insatiable. He once sent me a formal, letterhead assignment demanding to know if there was actually a Mr.

Adler who made the Adler-Elevator shoes, and, if so, in case there was a Mrs. Adler, was she taller than he was? He once gave me a 10-minute lecture on the evils of drink and then pulled a flat pint out of his desk drawer and tossed off a neat snort. "I disapprove of drinking before lunch," he said. "Let us go to lunch." Then he put the pint back. He had a face of an early Christian martyr and the shoulders of a young stud bull.

He strutted when he walked like a bantamweight boxer, and wore a hat that seemed to have been predigested. His choice of words was both impeccable and pointedly vulgar, and he could cry into a typewriter like an evangelist shouting come-to-Jesus when he wished. And he was the kindest man I ever knew for too short a time. I hope he likes his tush. I am a touch late on the assignment, but a tush he asked for and a tush he gets.

Nairobi is a far cry from wherever he is, but he sent me to Casablanca once, on a hunch and Sorrells was ever generous with his reporters' legs. 3 I Airica snortiy to fulfill an assignment he gave me just before he died of a heart attack in 1948. I am going to Kenya and Tanganyika to fetch home a "tush for Johnny. John was a big a kid as even though he was executive editor of The Scripps-Howard Newspapers for a long time, and a rough customer when he had to be, as well as a mush- 1 VV -9 a. 1 fed: -'vt' I hearted sentimentalist and a fellow wTith such a vitiun njsxii, BILLIE SCHEIBLE roofc other woman for trip in Billie's Cadd she turn him in to Secret Service? marvelous feel for people that you suspected him of built-in radar.

Had Poker-Playing Brain John said one time, in the weekly luncheon devoted to fatherly advice on such burning questions as whether you could take a drink of whisky before breakfast without a written excuse from teacher, that all his life he wanted to go to Africa and shoot him a lion and an elephant and see the sights. "I don't expect I will ever get the time," he I will pass the obligation on to you. You got to go to Africa and bring me home a tusk for my mantelpiece." Mr. Sorrells was referring to the tusk of an elephant, which as an alumnus of Arkansas he felt obliged to pronounce "tush." This is a trip to get a tush for John. I never wrote an on Johnny when he dropped off a chair one night, because I didn't trust myself not to become maudlin over a guy I loved better than my own father.

Sorrells was a hard man to put together in a piece. He had a tough, ribald, poker-playing brain, and the insides of an artist. He was the man who could make the budget trip and ruthlessly lop off extras while spending five hours with a cub reporter to tell him the facts of life. He could cuss like a stevedore and he liked to paint delicate water colors. ust 1935, it drove up in front of Billie Scheible's place.

Two other agents and I converged on it. One of them rapped on a side window and motioned the driver to open the door. When he did so, I grabbed Lustig and dragged him out into the street. Bystanders saw what they thought was a daylight brawl, In which an apparently wealthy, dignified man was being assaulted by a ruffian, meaning me. A woman swung at me with a handbag, others shouted for the police.

The other agents then joined the fray. They helped me take Lustig In. He was lodged in the Federal House of Detention. He boasted we would never keep him there. We laughed at him.

But he knew his powers better than we did. A few days later, In broad daylight, he escaped. Much has been written about the escape. A great deal of it is at variance with the facts. Lustig obtained extra bed sheets merely by giving an incorrect answer when he was asked by a porter how many sheets were needed in his dormitory.

He saved the extra ones, until he had nine. Out of these, he braided a rope. On Sept 1, he entered a third-floor lavatory, dropped his "rope" out of a window to the street below and prepared to descend. He saw pedestrians stopping to look up at him. Instantly, he began to go through the motions of a window cleaner.

He went down, from floor to floor, going through his window-washing act. When he reached the street, he ran around the nearest corner. Several minutes went by before the confused bystanders gave an alarm. Lustig had disappeared. Then began one of the country's greatest manhunts.

Billie Scheible Questioned' Billie Scheible was brought In for questioning. So was Arthur (Dapper Don) Collins, supposedly one of America's greatest confidence men. All we learned from Collins was that Lustig had swindled him, too! The mass production of Lus-tig's frauds began to come to light. Many persons reported he had "taken" them for or more. On Sept.

20, we raided a Palisades Ave. apartment in Union City, N. where we knew Lustig had been, we uncovered a million-dollar counterfeiting plant. It printed $5, $10, $20 and $100 bills, internal revenue stamps, whisky labels and passports. We arrested its opera- He was the greatest swindler of modern times.

His frauds netted him millions of dollars. He was known to have committed innumerable crimes we were never able to lay at his door. He preyed upon law abiding citizens and criminals alike. He swindled such crime tycoons as Al Capone, Jack (Legs) Diamond, Jules (Nicky) Arnstein, Big Bill Dwyer and many others. His sweetheart was Billie Scheible, former Queen of the Madames.

He defrauded the Pittsburgh and New York Madame with the others, and he made Billie like it. He was No. 1 man in our book of suspects in such cases as the Elwell shooting and the murder of movie director William Desmond Taylor. We were satisfied he was the "finger man" who betrayed Legs Diamond to his gangland murders. Jail Breaker, Too I will not recount all of Lus-tig's crimes.

But I will tell about his eventual arrest by the Secret Service and about his escape from the Federal House of Detention, in New York. He was the first prisoner ever to break out of that formidable jail. I brought Count Lustig in. I know there are others who have claimed that distinction. Most of them were far away from the scene, when the arrest was made.

Since I treated him without kid gloves, he always seemed to respect me. He told many people I was the man who dragged him off to jail. The U. S. Secret Service wanted the "Count," because as a sideline he was financing a counterfeiting racket.

In a Times Square, New York subway station locker we seized more than $51,000 In counterfeit bills and printing plates he had placed there. Billie His Sweetheart At the time, Mrs. Mae Scheible, alias Mary Brlggs, alias Billie Scheible, famous then for her Pittsburgh-New York chain of houses of prostitution, was living In an apartment In West 74th Street. She owned a flashy Cadillac Although he was Billie's sweetheart, Lustig borrowed the car to take another woman on a trip. We promptly received an anonymous tip from a woman that Lustig was using the 74th Street apartment as a headquarters We always thought Billie Scheible, burning with jealousy, was our informant.

We tapped Billie's telephone wire and "staked out" near the apartment. We were not sure what Count Lustig looked like. He was adept at disguises and had been described in many different ways. But we knew the auto. On an afternoon late in Aug- Happiness After 65 By Gilbert Love Lives Quietly Now in East End tor, William Watts.

But Lustig was not there. On Sept, 28, Lustig was arrested in Pittsburgh by Federal agents. He was returned to New York and lodged in The Tombs. Later, he was convicted and sentenced to a long term in Federal Penitentiary. He died there.

Billie's Income Tax Rap In February, 1936, Bffll Scheible was arrested, charged with transporting girls from Pittsburgh to New York City for immoral purposes. She and a man known as Joseph Patrick Ryan were indicted in the Southern District Court of New York on 15 counts for violation of the Mann Act. It was discovered that Billie Lustig's old sweetheart had an annual income of between $80,000 and $100,000 a year she had not reported to the income tax collectors. She got a four-year term in Federal Prison for tax evasion. Later, she was linked to Lucille.

Tallin, alias M. Farrell, alias J. Forbes, who was indicted in a vice ring case August, 1936. This case, In turn, disclosed a chain of command from Lustig, through Billie Scheible and Mallin, right to Charles (Lucky) Luciano. Swindled the Law! But to me, Victor Lustig was top man in the modern world of crime.

He was the only one I ever heard of who "swindled" the law. Once, when arrested in Texas, he talked a Texas sheriff into releasing him, into misappropriating In County funds and turning the money over to him for one of his "schemes." No one can top that! Copyright. 1951. by United Feature Syndicate. Inc.) NEXT "The Painless Billie Off Police Blotter 4 Years Did you happen to notice the article in the Sunday Press about old folks? Sidney R.

Yeas, an Illinois Congressman, had asked the House to set up a special committee to study their problems. There are more and more 4 if Count Lustig's $10,000 Joke Played Here Almost Got Him a Date with Muscle Boys Billie Scheible, one-time "Queen of the Madames," still Is a Pittsburgher, but a quiet one. Her last brush with notoriety was four years ago with the Hour Glass Cafe, a Fifth Ave. bar that specialized in prostitutes. mi- rv old lolks, because modern medicine is helping more persons to live longer, he pointed out.

He said they must have enough to live on. But just as important, he declared, they need something to do, a place to live, a feeling that they belong." Mr. Yeas isn't the first to recognize the non-financial problems of our elderly i. logically. It was a perfectly genuine bill.

Billie bought the machine for $10,000 and waited breathlessly for the 12-hour waiting period to end. She cranked out a piece of blank paper about the time the Count was checking Into a New York hotel. Later Billie caught up with the Count and threatened to have some of her strong-arm boys take an interest In him. He blandly asked her if she couldn't take a joke and gave her $10,000. A short time later he sold her $15,000 worth of worthless securities.

"The Count had a way with him," Billie once She was convicted of running a "call house" in connection with the restaurant, which happened to be across the street from the court house. Billie pleaded poor health and won leniency from the court. But she outsmarted herself. As soon as she'd beaten one rap she went to another court and tried to get her liquor license back. Judge John J.

Kennedy promptly sent Billie packing off to County jail on July 12, 1947. She stayed there until after the next fall's election. Since her release from jail, Billie has to keep off police blotters. She's living a quiet life in a large house in a well-to-do section of the East End. It was a far different story In the Thirties, when Billie was operating high, wide and hand- some both here and New York.

Those were the days when she was the confidant, friend and sometimes victim of the notorious Victor "Count" Lustig. The most famous story of Billie and the Count took place in Pittsburgh during one of his sojourns at her North Side house of prostitution. The according to legend, wTas sitting around drinking a cup of tea one morning when he pulled a small box out of his pocket. Billie asked politely what it was for and he explained it was a "money machine." "It makes perfect $1000 bills," the Count said, "but it's too slow. It only makes -one every 12 hours." Billie was skeptical, and the count became angry.

He checked his watch and cranked out a wet $1000 bill. "If you don't think it's good come down to the bank and I'll show he said. The bank changed It, quite citizens. And here and there, something is being done about them. In Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill, a small start was made recently.

A clubhouse was set up, exclusively for elderly persons. St Petersburg, Florida, has had a large number of elderly residents for many years. It has provided elaborate recreational facilities that help to keep them hale and happy. Its largest recreation center, on Mirror Lake, has acres of shuffleboand courts. It has special rooms for chess, bridge and dancing.

For the more energetic, there's lawn bowling and a roque court. Fee Is Hominal The place isn't just for the elderly, but the great majority of persons who use it are well up In years. Laurel Queen WELLSBORO, Pa. Pittsburgh and surrounding territory were well-represented by visitors at the Pennsylvania State Laurel Festival here and being one of the seven persons SIDE GLANCES By Galbraith LjL! Those using the various facilities are banded together in clubs. They pay a few dollars a year as dues.

The Shuffleboard Club alone has over 6000 members. The place provides not only recreation, but companionship as well. An elderly person, lonely in a rented room, can stroll over to the recreation center and find plenty of company. That is one design for living in the Golden eM, is the Colony for the Aged at Millville, N. J.

Here a non-profit organization offers small homes (when they are available) to persons over 65 who have good characters and small incomes. The Colony was started in 1937: now has about 30 homes on third-of-an-acre plots. Community Center In the center of the group of cottages is a community center building. In an assembly room, non-sectarian services are held on Sundays, and a club composed of the elderly residents meets on Thursdays. There also is a library, a piano, and comfortable furniture.

In the Colony, older persons can live pleasantly, economically, and enjoy the companionship of persons their own age. Sl0Py is exPanding slowly because it has no funds except contributions from per-SOnTf, are nte5ested in the experiment. another design. More, of this or other types, must be established. As the Colony for the Aged age should be the cream of life, to be enjoyed as one enjoys the harvest, or the loveliness of the Fall season.

By William A. White Press Staff Writer graduating class of their high school and scho-lasticaUy qualified to accept the four-year-tuition scholarship to Penn State, University of Pennsylvania University of Pittsburgh or Temple University, which is the prize that goes to the girl chosen queen. The queen is selected on the basis of beauty poise, personality and general conduct. There is no bathing suit parade of the girls and the winner is chosen by a vote of the seven judges who hold no conference in making their decision. She is escorted throughout the two-day event by the boy of her choice, who is the guest of townspeople while the girl is a guest at the Penn-Wells Hotel.

Each judge selects the five girls he believes top the list, in the order they rank in his opinion. When these five have been called out. the judges vote again, naming their choice for the crown and another girl for runner-up. A point system is used to determine the two win. ners.

Some of the persons here with whom I talked were of the opinion that many school officials frowned on girl contests of any sort and for that reason would not participate in the Laurel festival. These same persons pointed out that some worthy girl might thus be deprived of a college education and they hoped eventually the objections and fears of those school officials might be overcome. OFF THE RECORD By Ed Reed namea xo seieci tne istate Laurel Queen, I was Woman Convicted On Fraud Charge WAYNESBURG, June 21 tne target ior one question shot by almost every one of the visitors. "Why isn't there greater representation among the candidates for queen from Western Pennsylvania?" they asked. 1s if.

Yttift NY; Mrs. Tillie V. Smotzer, of Cru sps1- ir cible, was found guilty yesterday And that's a Question I 7 1 ''MMM II of fraudulent conversion in con can't answer, except that it's a case of many being invited fc nection with cashing a lottery and not too many accepting. i wt ticket for $1100 owned by a This year, anion? the neighbor woman, Mrs. Mary N.

Reynolds. Her attorney, R. Stanley Smith, immediately filed motion for a new trial and was given 30 days in which to file additional rea sons. Meanwhile, she is free un beautiful girls from various high schools who competed, there were five who might be called from Western Pennsylvania one each from Bellefonte, Brookville, Grove City, Greenville and Johnstown. Incidentally, one of these, Betty Stoner, from Bellefonte, made the final five, from which the queen, Sherrill Verna Hiller, of Jersey Shore, was chosen.

Sherrill, a blond, 17-year-old, also was chosen the most popular girl in the graduating class at Jersey Shore High School, which is a tip-off on the type of girls who compete for the Laurel Queen crown. Girls who compete must be members of the der bond. Mrs. Reynolds said she was unable to check the daily treasury total because she was not eettinp her paper and for that reason 'Will gave the ticket to Mrs. Smotzer who had access to a newspaper carrying the report.

"Why don't you admit this isn't a day for fishing and let's go home!" you fix the baby's bottle, George? My horoscop today said to let others toko leadership!".

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