May 18, 1958

Elmer Davis ( January 13, 1890 to May 18, 1958) spoke publicly against the McCarthy hearings. He was himself safe because of his prestige-- he was not only a media personality but during World War II FDR had put Elmer Davis in charge of the Office of War Information-- in other words, Davis was responsible for what the American public knew about the war, during the war. Davis persuaded the president to allow the citizens to see the bodies of dead soldiers, though not their faces, during the war. But we have forgotten this writer so let us glance first at a biographical piece:

In 1910 Davis received a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford. The time at Oxford, however, was cut short when his father was taken ill and eventually died. But despite his short stay in England, Davis was able to continue to make frequent trips to the continent. It was during one of these trips that he met and eventually married his wife, Florence.

After returning to America, Davis took an editorial position with Adventure magazine. But a year later he was to leave that for a job as reporter for the New York Times. For the next ten years, Davis would report on stories ranging from pugilist Jack Dempsey to evangelist Billy Sunday. It was his reportage of the latter that earned him fame and fortune. Since reporters were paid by the space their stories occupied, Davis’ coverage of Sunday was a gold mine. Samuel T. Williamson, a fellow Times reporter said of Davis: he “benefited from his facility with the English language,” which “made it possible for him to write a long story so phrased that a copy-reader couldn’t cut it much.”.....

There was a chatty current in American literature before the internet and Davis's books often fit that category. Here are a few titles of charming, and intellectually slender text; we recognize them as collections of blog posts:

I'll show you the town (1924)
Morals for moderns (1930)

Not to mention the war (1940).

Elmer Davis had in common with Raymond Chandler a love for cats. We read in Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962) of their mutual commiseration when both writers lost treasured cats about the same time. Chandler lost Taki, a black Persian in December 1951 and Elmer Davis could speak knowingly since he also had recently lost General Gray, also a Persian.