Leonard Aronson is a friend of mine who worked with Murray at the American. He remembers Murray as “a dapper fellow with a bald pate and a thin moustache who exuded an air of mischief and wit. He was a real pro, who’d been around a long time and who, still, was one of the men in the news room who felt accessible and regular and full of charm and willing to share his thoughts and experiences with neophyte reporters just breaking into the game.
“One of my last recollections was his telling me about one election eve in the 43rd ward, where he lived, just north of North Avenue in Old Town. Paddy ‘Chicago ain’t ready for reform’ Bauler was the alderman of the ward at that time and on election eve George said he wandered over to Bauler’s saloon on North Avenue to watch the vote tallies roll in.”
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Aronson continues, “I doubt that story ever made it into print, although it might have, but it was just the kind of tale you’d hear at a bar after work that made it all so much fun, and Murray had a thousand moments like that to share.”
Why am I telling you about this long-vanished Chicago newsman? A friend of mine came across a letter from Murray to her late father. He’d written it in January 1968 (a few months before Aronson joined the American). Murray and Bill Grosse had been friends since they were boys in Saint Louis. Now Grosse was an ad man, and he’d apparently written Murray to complain about how hard he had to work. Newspapermen have never had any patience with complaining ad men, and Murray promptly sat down and wrote an eight-page reply. I’m guessing he told Grosse more about the newspaper game than his old pal ever wanted to know. But I savored every word. As I said, I know George Murray.
Fifty years ago all the American firms who had anything to sell on the consumer market budgeted their average of $100,000 a year for advertising and, except for a trifle spent on billboards and in institutional magazines, poured it all into newspapers.
When I was a kid I was nourished on Richard Harding Davis and the tales of such newspaper greats as Ambrose Bierce and Mark Twain, Jack London and Floyd Gibbons. I could not wait to get into the business, as I did 35 years ago.
