Interview with Herman Landau, December 20, 1990

Mary Bobo:

This is Mary Bobo of the University of Louisville Oral History Center. This is one in a series of interviews on the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times papers. Today is April 15, 1981. I'm talking with Mr. Herman Landau. Mr. Landau's date of birth was April 12, 1911. His place of birth is Louisville, Kentucky. His parents were Rebecca and O.H. Landau. His dates of employment with the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times extended from 1928 through 1975. At the time of his retirement he was a makeup editor of the Louisville Times.

Mary Bobo:

Mr. Landau, we're going to start as far back as you can remember at this point, at least after you had finished high school. I would like to see how you came to work with the papers to begin with when I'm sure there were other options available at this point.

Herman Landau:

I really got on the paper by accident. I was downtown. Papers were at Third and 1:00Liberty at that time. I was on my way to a job interview, and my sister was working in town. I stopped in her office and she said to me that a friends of hers named Gladys Sullivan who worked on the paper needed an office boy for 90 days. Did I want the job? And I said, "Well, sounds like an interesting thing. I can always look for a different kind of job in fall." So I went over there and met Ms. Sullivan and she told me that they were having a model airplane contest and it was being followed by their summertime marble tournament and they could use me for three months.

Herman Landau:

And I said, "Sounds interesting. When do you want me to start?" Well, she introduced me to the head of the department who was Donald McWane. And he said, "Oh, we'll put you to work right now." So we didn't discuss terms or anything else. I just took off my coat and went to work. And...when...we, we were working on promoting a model airplane contest and then later in the summer, the marble tournament. And, then the company took on a big project. They were going to bring Santa Claus and eight reindeer here. And the project involved sending a personal letter from Santa Claus to every schoolchild in Louisville and Jefferson County.

Herman Landau:

And we got the names from the school people and we started in addressing 3:00envelopes. And they hired a bunch of temporary help in there to address the envelopes. And we had to fold and seal all of these envelopes. We didn't stamp them. They were shipped to Nome, Alaska, and they were stamped and postmarked up there and sent back to Louisville by regular mail. So anyway, along about this time, with the Santa Claus project coming on they decided that, well, they were going to need somebody around longer than that. And so they kept me on. I began learning a little bit about the newspaper business.

Herman Landau:

We were closely tied up with the newsrooms of both papers. And, I stayed on in 4:00the promotion department. Well, Santa Claus came to town. And we went on expeditions. We went to visit all the kids in Kentucky and Southern Indiana. We gave out candy canes to every kid that came to see Santa Claus. I was in charge of the distribution of those things. And it was always a headache trying to outguess the attendance. You never knew how many to plan for because while you had a school enrollment figure, you didn't know how many preschoolers were there or how many kids would come to you, "I got a baby sister at home. Let me take another one home to her," and things like that. It was a problem for me to keep up with the candy factory and see that there were always enough candy supplies on hand.

Herman Landau:

Well, one time we were out. This...Santa's sleigh, with his eight reindeer...was in charge of an Eskimo. We were out riding one day and the Eskimo yelled to the driver to stop. We stopped. "What's the matter?" The Eskimo was cold. I forget the Eskimo's name. It slips my mind. It was so long ago. So anyway, we stopped and we held a council of war on how do you keep the Eskimo warm. He had a lap robe. We stopped in a country store. We bought a kerosene lantern, put the lantern under the Eskimo's blanket, and that kept him warm on the trip.

Herman Landau:

An interesting thing happened when the reindeer first came to Louisville. They were unloaded from a truck in Central Park. And it was a big public ceremony, greeting Santa in his arrival in town. But one or two of the reindeer were stubborn, wouldn't get out of the truck. Nobody could budge them. Well, none of us were farmers or reindeer handlers. We thought that the Eskimo would be able to take care of them, but he couldn't. So Orville Stivers, who was the superintendent of county schools, came over to my boss and he said, "Mack, you having trouble?" And Mack says, "You can see." Mr. Stivers says, "Well, you know I'm an old country boy. I've been handling animals all my life. I know how to handle these critters." And sure enough, he went over in the truck and he got 7:00the reindeer out [laughing 00:07:03].

Mary Bobo:

These type of promotional campaigns, were they just starting at the time that you came or had this been going on all along?

Herman Landau:

Well...they were...I wouldn't say they were just starting, but they were being intensified. At that time, we had competition. The Herald Post was still in business. And there was a lot of competition for circulation, so we were always promoting some kind of a contest or something to keep our name before the public and try to tie it in with something that would get people to buy our paper instead of the other one.

Mary Bobo:

Can you think of the other types of things that you would be doing that early? I guess we're talking about the late '20s, early '30s.

Herman Landau:

Well, the Courier-Journal ran the National Spelling Bee for a long time. As a matter of fact, we originated it. It was a man named Joe Humphrey who originated the National Spelling Bee. Since then it was taken over by somebody else. The 8:00Courier gave up the syndication rights on it. But we ran it from our office, not only for the whole state of Kentucky, but we tried to franchise other newspapers in other cities to take care of their own areas. And then we had to arrange the national finals in Washington. And, I don't know whether it was ... I think it was the second year I was working there that they sent me to Washington for a week to run the National Spelling Bee.

Herman Landau:

And we arranged a whole program of sightseeing for these kids. And we had a tour bus for them, a Gray Line tour bus. So we stayed at the Hamilton Hotel at 14th 9:00and K Streets. We practically took over the hotel. I come out of the hotel one morning and all the kids were prompt. They were ready to go on their sightseeing tour. The bus driver says to me, "Hey. Got a job for you." I said, "What's the problem?" He said, "My guide didn't show up today. I have to...I need you to tell these people what they're seeing." I said, "I've never been to Washington before." I said, "I don't know what these places are."

Herman Landau:

He says, "It's easy." He gives me his little Gray Line script. And they had it timed to the very last traffic light. On the left is such and such a building and it's got a description. All I had to do is read this thing as the bus drove. And the bus driver would signal to me if there was any change to be made. So 10:00here I was a sightseeing guide and I never seen the town myself before. But it was all in a day's work. I had to write a story about what the Louisville, or the Kentucky winner was doing in Washington and what the Southern Indiana kid was doing in Washington. While I was there, why, I had requests from some of the chaperones from some of the smaller papers who didn't send reporters along that asked me to write stories for them. So, well, all right. So I just added that onto the work.

Mary Bobo:

So is this actually how you began reporting then? Or had that been part of your job prior?

Herman Landau:

In the promotion department, we used to publish a monthly paper for our carrier 11:00boys called The Hustler. Working on that was added to my duties. And in effect, I became editor of it. I was taught how to write copy, how to take pictures. And that was the beginning of my reporting. But what I did besides, I went down on Saturday nights. I worked on the police beat as a cub reporter, volunteer, which is the way most reporters started in those days. Reporters worked as cubs, which meant for free, for anywhere from three to six months, and then if an opening developed, why, they got hired regularly.

Herman Landau:

Reporters' hours in those days on the Courier, which is a morning paper, were 12:00from 1:30 in the afternoon until 11 at night, six days a week. And if you got stuck with a story, you stayed with it. No overtime or no days off or anything like that. We only had one holiday a year. You had your choice of either Christmas or New Year. Aside from that, you worked six days a week, and you did get two weeks vacation. But that's a little farther ahead in my promotion department experiences.

Mary Bobo:

I just had a question or two before we move away from this. I think in the interest of inflation, it might be of interest to see how much, say, a promotion like the Spelling Bee would have cost back in those days and how did you go about getting the other states involved in it? Was it much selling to this?

Herman Landau:

Yeah. We wrote letters to the executives of other newspapers and asked them to pay a franchise fee. The fee would range anywhere from 100 to 500 dollars, depending on the size of the paper and the territory they wanted to cover. We gave $2500 in prizes in the national finals. Now, the year I went to Washington, the paper gave me $2500, the prize money, to take to Washington. And I was scared stiff because here I was never accustomed to having that kind of money with me. That was a First National Bank in those days [laughing 00:13:50].

Mary Bobo:

Well, how many prizes would you give at that point? Then you would have- the state winners would have already been chosen.

Herman Landau:

The state winners were chosen during the KEA Convention. That was a standard 14:00feature every year. Now, we arranged in the State Spelling Bee, it was broken down into counties. Every county had a finalist. And, they all came to Louisville during the KEA Convention. And we arranged it so everybody in the state finals got a prize, not necessarily a cash prize. I think the top prize in the state was $100 and down to $5. Everybody who didn't win a cash prize got a Webster Collegiate Dictionary. And that was another purchasing problem we had to worry about to make sure that we had enough dictionaries.

Herman Landau:

Now, I had one, one incident. Our...our promotion department stenographer typed 15:00up the word lists. The lists were developed by two professors in the East. I forget their names. But anyway, they would send us a master list and then we would retype them so that each of the judges would have a copy of the list, which involved about five copies. And, after they were retyped, why, we had to check each one to make sure that they were right. Well, it turned up one day in the state finals a boy spelled moccasin. The judges looked at their list and they ran him out, said he misspelled it.

Herman Landau:

Well, he comes back about two or three minutes later with his dictionary in his hand and he says, "Look, I was right." So the judges consulted their list and, 16:00sure enough, we made an error in the list. Well, you can imagine what I heard the next day. But anyway, that was the only- only major error that we ever had in the word list.

Mary Bobo:

This brings something to my mind I'd like for us to pursue for a few minutes. It seems that there are so many different ways that a campaign- promotional campaign can be approached. Why did the educational side of this campaign, why was this type of thing chosen over something maybe where adults would receive prizes? Was this an indication of the direction that the paper was going to go in backing education and other things of importance in this community?

Herman Landau:

That may have been part of the motivation, but then if you get the kids involved in something, why, you're going to get the parents interested too. And, this 17:00project lent itself to innumerable possibilities. You came up with all kinds of human interest stories. All the weekly papers in Kentucky and Southern Indiana were writing stories about it, and naturally, and talking about their local spelling competitions. They mentioned that the Spelling Bee was sponsored by the Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times so that we got the- all this publicity from that operation.

Mary Bobo:

Well, even after you left the promotional department, can you think of other educational-type campaigns that followed that?

Herman Landau:

Since then, they've gone into things like there's a John Wallace conservation project and a forestry project, but I'm not very familiar with those.

Mary Bobo:

Let's move back then and see how it came about that you did leave the promotional department and began to move up in your career.

Herman Landau:

Well, I'd been in the promotion department about four years and running the marble tournament. And e had a summertime fresh air fund and whatever else, the spelling bees, and all that sort of stuff. The Depression came along. And about- beginning about 1930, the paper had a big retrenchment program. And there was no- they didn't have- they put a freeze on hiring. And they, they didn't fire anybody that I know of. They cut the staff down by attrition. Anybody who died 19:00or resigned wasn't replaced, so the staff got smaller and smaller. It got to the point where the Courier was short of reporters. Well, they couldn't hire anybody. So, one night the managing editor of the Courier, Neil Dalton, called me in and asked me if I would be interested in being a reporter.

Herman Landau:

And I thought that was a tremendous idea. After all, I wasn't getting anywhere in the promotion department because it was a four-person operation. And there wasn't really any future in there for me. So I said, "Sure, I'll take the job. When do I start?" He says, "Oh, as soon as we can arrange it." It took a week or 20:00so to arrange the formalities, and I became a reporter on the Courier. Well, they did hire a replacement for me, a boy named Douglas Carnett, who came from Hopkinsville, Kentucky. He was real bright and he later became promotion manager and a high-powered official in the company.

Herman Landau:

Anyway, I went- I became a general assignment reporter on the Courier. And...along about that time, Congress passed the NRA, which put us on a 40-hour week. So that was a wonderful change to suddenly go from a 48 or 50-hour week 21:00down to 40.

Mary Bobo:

Let's talk about these years and how it was to work in a large metropolitan area during this time and, as you said, your general reporting. What kinds of stories were you covering? Just give me a feel for the whole era.

Herman Landau:

Well, I was doing general assignments. I would cover any kind of stories. Sometimes I'd work on the police beat. Now, in those days - this was before police radio - we used to go out with a patrol wagon. The police reporters' room was in the basement of the City Hall right under Second District police headquarters. And when the buzzer went off, you would just drop what you were doing and run for the patrol wagon. You'd go out with the police and you would get your story and you would phone it into a rewrite man.

Herman Landau:

Well, I never cared for that kind of reporting. I never cared for the seedy side of life. But in the office, I covered conventions. I covered lectures. I covered business meetings of various kinds. I covered civic events or any kind of gatherings. And I had an adaptability for copyediting. So that when the copydesk found itself shorthanded, they would call me over there to help them. The copydesk was headed by Wilbur Cogshaw. He was a real expert. He practically ran 23:00the paper. As a matter of fact, he later became news editor and assistant managing editor. I understand that they wanted to make him managing editor at one time, but he didn't want what he called a front office job.

Herman Landau:

He didn't want to have to get out and meet the public. He was a production man who wanted to put out the paper. So...he taught me how to edit copy and write headlines, and I became a copyeditor. It got to the point where I would come into the office every day and look at the city editor's assignment sheet. It would say, "Herman 'question mark,'" And I'd ask the city editor, "Well, what am I doing today?" He says, "Well, I think they want you on the copydesk." So 24:00everybody was bidding for my time. Of course, it was great to be in demand, but I couldn't really plan anything because I never knew what hours I was going to have to work.

Mary Bobo:

Well, at this point, if you had had to choose between copyediting and reporting, which would you have chosen, which-

Herman Landau:

Ultimately, I chose the copyediting. And I think it was maybe two or three years later, they made me assistant Sunday editor. At that time, we used to have to turn out a weekly news review. We had to get up all of the Sunday feature sections and the Sunday magazine, which was then the old brown rotogravure-style section. Well, the Sunday editor did the magazine part and we had just switched 25:00from the rotogravure to the more like the modern magazine. It was in a transitional stage. He did the magazine and I was left with all the feature sections.

Herman Landau:

Of course, we still had the departmental editors, like Boyd Martin was doing the drama, and the women were getting up their pages. But it was up to me to assemble them all into one neat package. And, those were the assistant Sunday editor's duties.

Mary Bobo:

We're continuing talking about the old Sunday feature paper as it was when you were working on it. Tell us a little more about this. Explain.

Herman Landau:

Well, the paper was divided up into three or four sections. We had a news 26:00section and a sports section. And then we had a passing show section. A, In those days, we called it a women's section and a magazine. Well, it was up to the Sunday department to put the passing show and the women's sections together. And...we also used to have to make up the early edition of the news section on Saturday afternoon. We put out the first edition and then by that time, the news department came to work and they would take over the whole operation. But I cut my teeth in the Sunday department, so to speak, and learned all the techniques 27:00of layout and makeup while I was there.

Herman Landau:

Of course, I had to do a certain amount of reporting while I was assistant Sunday editor. I used to do a Sunday travel page and a Sunday building and real estate page. Now, in those days, remember this was the Depression. If somebody had a $500 remodeling job, that was big news in those days. Anything that would help put somebody to work was considered big news.

Mary Bobo:

As you move on through the Depression and, say, after the election of Roosevelt and the New Deal agencies and programs began to take effect, how is the paper going to react to the things, particularly as they affect Louisville?

Herman Landau:

Well, there was a tremendous change that came about in the newspaper itself. We had an executive vice president named Brainard Platt. He died on Christmas day. 28:00I think it was 1932. He used to stand over the shoulders of the news department and really try to dictate the content of the paper. Our general manager was Emmanuel Levi. Well, Emmanuel Levi left shortly afterward. He became general manager of one of the Hearst papers in Chicago. And, the Bingham family brought Mark Ethridge in to be general manager.

Herman Landau:

And Mark Ethridge had a totally different concept. He decided that the way to have a good newspaper is to accent quality. And he cut out a whole lot of the promotion department and he went in for quality writing, more reporting, and more space devoted to news. So we had an abrupt change of attitude.

Mary Bobo:

Did you sense a change of attitude that the staff was going to go along with this? Was it a welcome change?

Herman Landau:

Oh yes. It was a welcome change. I came into work one afternoon and I saw several people sitting at desks in the newsroom. I went up to the city editor and I says, "Hey, who are all the visiting firemen?" I thought maybe they were visiting newspaper men on a junket or something. He said, "Those are new reporters. Mark Ethridge went out and hired 10 new reporters in one piece." [laughing 00:29:45] So everybody on the staff began, began to feel much better because we had to write for such a tight newspaper. For instance, I remember in 30:00the darkest days of the Depression, the Courier-Journal was only publishing eight or 10 pages on Monday morning and that included the classified ads. So every- [the interview cuts off 00:30:13]

Mary Bobo:

This is Mary Bobo. I'm continuing talking with Herman Landau. We've been talking about his experiences with the Courier-Journal during the years of the Depression. We have just introduced the fact that great changes were made when Mark Ethridge came to work for the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times papers. Let's elaborate on these early years with Mark Ethridge there and the changes that we were talking about at this point, Mr. Landau.

Herman Landau:

Well, Mark Ethridge made a complete change in the orientation of the newspaper. 31:00He put his total accent on quality. And, he expanded the space available in the paper. He hired a lot of reporters. He gave the news department a much freer hand than it ever had. He completely separated the advertising department from the news department. It used to be that in the old days that every now and then the advertising department would come up to the newsroom and ask for a special story about some business thing that was, in effect, a free ad. Sometimes it got in the paper and sometimes it didn't, but at least they had the privilege of asking.

Herman Landau:

When Mark Ethridge came, that was completely stopped. It was strictly up to the 32:00news departments to determine what was news, what was fit to be put in the paper. He reorganized the news departments. Now, both newspapers were competitive. The Louisville Times and the Courier-Journal had always been competitive. And Mark Ethridge accented this competition. If a Times reporter came across a story too late for the last edition of the Times, he wasn't going to give it to the Courier. He was going to try to sit on it and give it to the Times the next day. Similarly, if the Courier got a story early in the day, they weren't about to give it to the Times. They were trying to hold it for themselves.

Herman Landau:

We were always brought up with this competitive spirit. Now, even down on the police beat we had that competition. We also had, until 1936, we had competition 33:00with the Herald Post.

Mary Bobo:

It seems that so many elements are coming together at the same time, the Herald Post going out of circulation, Mark Ethridge coming, the Depression beginning to lift, just a revitalization of what's going on at the paper.

Herman Landau:

Well, things began to pick up in 1937. Of course, as it affected me, during the darkest days of the Depression I came to work one Christmas night. I was supposed to be working on the copydesk and there were only three copy editors. The head of the copydesk, who also served as the telegraph editor, was Wilbur Cogshaw. And he also- his duties also included laying out page one. He said to me, "We don't have a makeup editor." I said, "So what?" He said, "Well, somebody 34:00has to do it. You go upstairs and be the makeup man." I said, "I don't know a thing about it." He says, "The printers will teach you."

Herman Landau:

So I went up there and- to the composing room and, sure enough, the printers whom I had gotten acquainted with back in the days when I was working on The Hustler, worked with me and they showed me a whole lot of things. We got along together very well. In those days, the paper was not preplanned. Today, it's preplanned. The news department knows every last line that's going in there and where it's going before it leaves the newsroom. But in those days, the different departments would each send up their copy separately. The city desk would send up the local copy. The Kentucky department would send up the state news, and the 35:00telegraph editor would send up all the national news.

Herman Landau:

And when it got up to the composing room, why, it was up to the makeup editor to look at the space and look at the copy and make them fit, and that's what I was doing. So I did that. And evidently I did a pretty fair job of it because they kept giving me more and more of it. And ultimately, I wound up as the Courier makeup editor. I worked as makeup editor four nights a week and I was head of the copydesk one night a week. Of course, we had to run seven nights a week, but we only worked five days after the 40-hour week came along.

Mary Bobo:

How was the paper set up if you were working only 40 hours a week? Did you have two shifts of people?

Herman Landau:

We, we had one shift on the copydesk. The copy editors worked from 4:00 to 1:00. The printers used to work from 6:00 to 2:30. The paper went to press about 1:30. And the makeup editor would come in later than the copydesk and stay later. The copydesk would go home. Most of them would go home before the final edition of the paper came out. But some of us had to stay around and check the final edition. And the makeup editor was one of those three. Now, I did substitute as head of the copydesk one night a week and I was off two nights. Now, this was a schedule that was worked out so that there was total coverage seven nights a week.

Herman Landau:

Now, on Saturdays, when we had an early edition of the Sunday paper, the telegraph editor and some of the copydesk did come to work early. Then we did have a two-shift day. But the rest of the week, it was done on one shift. Now, the reporters had two shifts because they had a daytime bunch of reporters because they had to keep hours the governmental offices and business people were available. And then we also had a night shift to cover nighttime events and night police reporters.

Mary Bobo:

But we're still talking about for each paper?

Herman Landau:

For easch- well, the Times had only one shift because the Times ran only in the daytime. They were through at four o'clock in the afternoon. Now, once in a while one of their reporters would cover a nighttime story, but basically we did 38:00the nighttime coverage.

Mary Bobo:

You've mentioned several things that I want to go back and deal with that began to happen as Mark Ethridge came into the scene. Let's go back and talk about the expansion of the paper. You were talking about the size of the paper prior to Mark Ethridge coming. What things began to be included that had not previously been there? Is this when your foreign coverage began to be expanded, home coverage? What is happening?

Herman Landau:

Well, the total coverage began to expand. The paper bought The New York Times News Service which gave them a much broader range of copy, both for current news events and feature material. He expanded the photography department and went in 39:00for more pictures. He emphasized quality writing, and just by total expansion of the news space, every department benefited from it. He didn't say that you have to give more coverage to a specific item, but it was just like, well, it was like throwing a stone into a pond and the ripples spread. Everybody benefited from it.

Mary Bobo:

Had there been bureaus in different locations prior to this?

Herman Landau:

Yes, we- there had been a- as far back as I can remember the Courier-Journal had a Frankfort bureau. They also had a Lexington bureau. Some of these were expanded. Some of them took on new coverage. Now, at the same, at the same time, 40:00the circulation department made a much more intensive effort throughout the state and broadened the circulation area of the paper so that it covered practically every county in Kentucky and 16 counties in Southern Indiana. We covered all of Kentucky except the area right around Cincinnati.

Herman Landau:

And we used to brag about you could get the Courier delivered on your doorstep in the morning anywhere in Kentucky. Now, this was before the days of good roads too, so it was really an effort to get the paper to some of these places. Now, I remember one incident one Saturday night. The Western Kentucky edition of the paper went to press about 7:45. The IC Railroad left for west Kentucky about 41:008:40. We used to have to get the paper printed, addressed, bundled, down to the station, and unloaded by the time the train pulled out. Well, one night the news department was late getting the paper out.

Herman Landau:

The stereotypers had a little trouble with their operation and the pressmen had trouble with their operation. And we finally did get the paper printed. And this truck driver gets down to Seventh Street Station just as the train is pulling out. He called the circulation manager, who was Jasper Reisen, and said, "Mr. Reisen, train pulled out. They wouldn't wait for me to unload my papers." AndReisen said, "Well, you just hop in that truck and drive to Paducah with the 42:00papers," which is what the man did. Now, today you'd get a lot of backtalk and union rules and everything else, but in those days, why, the public was paramount. They got their papers.

Mary Bobo:

Were there always the different editions of the paper?

Herman Landau:

Oh yeah. Far back as I can remember there were different editions. The basic orientation for the editions was the time involved in distribution so that everybody could get a paper. Now, the news was adjusted on a regional basis also, but we didn't concern ourselves so much with the regional news as we did with the time element. Now, I had one interesting experience when I was assistant Sunday editor. We used to print our own Sunday comics. And we let a contract to rebuild our color press. It was going to take three months. So 43:00during the three months, we contracted with an outfit in Peoria, Illinois, to print our, to print our Sunday comics.

Herman Landau:

So, this operation worked smoothly. We used to get the basic mats and ads from the syndicates in New York and we'd assemble them and send them on to the shop and they'd ship us the comics in time for Sunday paper. Middle of the night one night about, oh it must have been Wednesday night or Thursday night, I forget which. I get a frantic call. The general manager of the plant says, "My plant 44:00just burned down." I said, "We need 180,000 Sunday comics. I got to get them." He said, "Well, I can't do anything for you. I don't have a plant." But he said, "if you'll talk to the general manager in New York, why, maybe you can work out something."

Herman Landau:

So I got on the phone and called the man in New York. I wasn't getting him out of bed because he'd already been alerted by the fire. And I says, "I got a problem. I have to have 180,000 Sunday comics." He said, "Well, if you can get the syndicates in New York first thing in the morning to replace the ads and the mats, we can do them at another plant in," I think it was Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, "but it will have to be on a time and a half basis and I don't 45:00know what it will cost." I says, "I don't give a damn what it costs." I said, "It's not a Sunday paper without Sunday comics." I said, "Just see to it that I got 180,000 funnies here in time to deliver Sunday morning."

Herman Landau:

So anyway, I called all the syndicates in New York and told them to rush this stuff to Wilkes-Barre and so on. And sure enough, Sunday paper came around everybody had Sunday comics. Well, the following week they had to do the same thing. This went on for weeks at a time and a half basis. And I never did find out what the bill was and nobody ever said beans to me. Nobody complained. The circulation department was very happy that they had Sunday comics with the 46:00paper. But that's- I mean that's the way they ran the operation. They told us to produce a newspaper and we did it.

Mary Bobo:

A second thing that you mentioned, when you were talking about Mark Ethridge and I think it probably follows exactly what you're talking about here is the hiring of more reporters. Did you get the feeling that maybe for the first time in your experience with the Courier-Journal that people were being brought in from the outside? Was this a problem? Was it something to look forward to? Was it exciting, new people coming in? Was this something that was taking place?

Herman Landau:

Well, we always did have outsiders on the paper, although for the most part they gravitated to us from the smaller papers in the region. Alan Trout was from west 47:00Tennessee and Joe Hart was from east Kentucky. And Dalton Connell was from central Kentucky, and so on. So the staff was not always a Louisville staff, so we were used to outsiders coming in. But these were people from Toledo, Atlanta, and other places like that. And they brought a lot of ideas with them that were helpful to the paper, but I can't say that very many of them stayed around very long. Now, one of them did stay. James Pope came from the Atlanta Journal and he later became Managing editor of the Courier and then executive editor of both papers.

Mary Bobo:

I think this touches on maybe two different things I'd like for you to go back 48:00and talk with me about for a few minutes. One is this feeling of the Courier-Journal belonging to Louisville and the Courier-Journal as being a top newspaper in the entire country. Going back to the first thought, the Courier-Journal belonging to Louisville, tell me a little bit about the printers and some of the behind the scenes people that you have already mentioned taught you some of what you needed to learn. Tell me about these people who were basically Louisville people and to whom this was a way of life.

Herman Landau:

Well, we had Linotypes in the old days and each one had to be- each machine had an operator. I remember one old operator that we had was named Dan Leach. He told me that he used to set Henry Waterson's editorials, and Henry Waterson 49:00scrawled them in longhand. Dan used to see a word every now and then that he couldn't reproduce, and he would invent his own word and stick it in there. He said he didn't know how many of Henry Waterson's editorials he helped compose, but he did. Now, the printers were a very high-skilled group. What they lacked basically was intensive education. Most of them came from country towns and grew up in one-room schoolhouses, but there was nothing wrong with their intellectual savvy. They were smart people.

Herman Landau:

And, well they...well, the old-timers, they knew grammar. They knew how to 50:00spell. They were very helpful in that respect. But...then there were the...the printers were divided into several groups besides the Linotype operators. You had the people who set up the ads, and then you had the people who worked on the makeup. And they were the ones who put the type in the forms. And I was working most closely with the people on the makeup. Now, they were old-timers. They'd had experience working with other editors and they knew the general style and orientation, and so they were good teachers. But actually, it was a two-way street because after I had worked around the composing room for a long while, I got so that I was training their apprentices for them when they came out on the makeup.

Herman Landau:

I couldn't show them what to do because the union rules. I wasn't allowed to touch anything in the shop, but I could tell them what had to be done. And I helped train many an apprentice who later on became a highly-skilled journeyman printer.

Mary Bobo:

Are there any labor considerations during this time period that you want to remember?

Herman Landau:

It's- the whole time I worked on the paper, labor relations were very good. It's true that the printers would have their disagreements with the management and go into contract negotiations. But we always looked at it this way. I told the makeup people that I worked with, I says, "Look, actually you consider me part of the management. I'm not part of the management. I work for the newsroom. But 52:00my responsibility is to get a paper to the public every day." I said, "Now, your argument with the management doesn't concern me in the least. I'm interested in the public." And any settlement that they made was retroactive and they kept on working with me and with other people.

Herman Landau:

And they always did their best to turn out a good paper, no matter how angry they were with the management. And we had wonderful relations. I was only involved in one strike. The National Engravers Union called a strike, which the local boys were not in favor of. And it lasted about 10 days, I guess. But the printers didn't honor the photo engravers strike, so we kept on putting the paper out with our regular union help.

Mary Bobo:

Is the newspaper business, and again, we're still talking about printers and 53:00craftsmen, is the newspaper business a family-type thing in that a father, son, a grandfather may-

Herman Landau:

It used to be. There was a lot of nepotism. A father and a son would come along and his son would become a printer. And they took great pride in the fact that they could do this. It was a very respected craft to be associated with. And for a long time, they were paid much better than carpenters or electricians or other union help, but not in recent years.

Mary Bobo:

I know I'm asking you something that possibly we don't have it right now, but in the '30s, about how many different crafts were you dealing with?

Herman Landau:

It's- well, I was dealing most directly with the printers. That's the 54:00International Typographical Union. They set the type. We had the photo engravers. We had the stereotypers, and we had the pressmen. Each of these was a separate union. And each one had its own sphere of operation. Now, as makeup editor, I had to deal with all of them at one time or another. As a matter of fact, I had to deal with everything all over the building that somehow or other it impinged on the makeup of the paper.

Mary Bobo:

This is one of the reasons that I felt talking with you among the first was important because I felt that the job that you did probably reached into a lot of different areas that it gave you an inside look that perhaps everyone did not have. Is this true?

Herman Landau:

Well, yes, yes, it is true. Well, it got to be this. I had a brother who worked 55:00on the paper, brother Joseph. He became a copy editor. He started as a copy boy on the Courier-Journal shortly after I came to work there. He worked at night as copy boy and went to University of Louisville in the daytime. I also went to UofL part of the time while I worked, but I couldn't combine work and school because for various reasons. So, Joe became a copy editor. Later on, he became head of the copydesk and editor of the Sunday magazine. But I would get involved all over the building and everybody got to know me.

Herman Landau:

It used to be that in the good old days, if you would dial the Courier-Journal switchboard and you would ask for Mr. Landau they wouldn't ask you which one, they would automatically give you Joe. If you'd call and ask for Herman you would get me immediately, simply because everybody in the building knew me. I had been all over the place. Whenever somebody picked up the paper and found something wrong with it, why, right away my phone would ring and I would have to take care of it.

Mary Bobo:

Let's talk for a few minutes about the latter part of the '30s. Are things going to continue to change as we're moving towards, of course, the Second World War and what's happening in Europe? Did you find your job any different or any more 57:00difficult as news began to come out of Europe of what was happening?

Herman Landau:

We found ourselves working much harder and we were covering more and more international news as interest developed in that area. Now, of course, Pearl Harbor Day was on a Sunday, December 7th, and I heard this flash on the radio in the middle of the afternoon that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. And Joe and I decided, well, we better rush down to the office. This is going to require a lot of work. And we went to work that day. Neither one of us ever remembered going home afterward. We must have worked around the clock clear on through the next night putting out paper because war made a tremendous dislocation.

Herman Landau:

Now, the draft came along prior to the war. The draft started in 1939. And every now and then you'd hear about somebody being drafted, but it wasn't at the point where it took anybody out of the office or anything like that. Nobody was taken out of an important job. Now, later on during the war, why, people would be drafted right and left and had to be replaced.

Mary Bobo:

I guess one thing that led me to ask this is it seems that so much has been written and said about Henry Waterson's stand during the First World War as against the German state. I guess what I'm trying to get at is did you see any polarization or- of the community? I'm talking about '37, '38, '39, '40, prior 59:00to us being involved in the war. Could you pick up any of this that possibly had been during the First World War with the paper, with the people working on the paper?

Herman Landau:

Well, of course, you know, I was just quite young during the First World War and I have the vaguest recollection of it. I remember everybody hating the Germans and so on. And I think that there was a revulsion toward the Germans beginning to build up in the middle '30s with the rise of Hitler because a lot of people disliked what Hitler was doing over there. So when war did break out, I mean there was a great, I guess you would call it a coalescence of sentiment, the tremendous outpouring of patriotism. There wasn't any question. Once Pearl 60:00Harbor developed, why, everybody had one single purpose. We got to lick the axis.

Mary Bobo:

But you don't recall any organized German American feeling in this community or any of them being-

Herman Landau:

There was a certain amount of it. There was a German American bond that tried to whip up German sentiment. And of course, there's a whole lot of German blood in Louisville. There are a lot of old German families. And yet, they were basically pro-American.