Martinelli Gets the Gong from WJZ

But, Swing Music Is More Important Than Citizenship Awards

It's a pity that WJZ pulled the switch so promptly at 11 o'clock last night. Another sixty seconds and we'd undoubtedly have heard the great voice of Giovanni Martinelli to round out the most heart-warming half hour we've come across in some time.

The occasion was the announcement of awards to citizens of foreign birth for significant contributions to American life. Harry W. Chase of the National Institute of Immigrant Welfare had already honored Scientist Nikola Tesla and Professor Felix Frankfurter. Both had answered (the former in a written statement read by a friend in Tesla's absence) with eloquent and truly noble words.

But tempus was fugiting and Dr. Chase barely got in the last syllable of Martinelli's name before the program went off the air.

If you didn't hear it, you really missed something. There wasn't any dramatization and only a bit of song at the beginning, but the brief remarks of all concerned were as far above the usual run-of-the-mine stuff, as could be imagined.

It was the story of Tesla, who came to these shores in 1884, nearly losing his life en route and finally landing with four cents in his pocket, who worked again and again as a common laborer to end in the front ranks of international science. And it was the genuine patriotism of Frankfurter which the least jingoistic and most unsentimental citizen of these States must share nowadays.

Functions like this are usually pretty deadly over the air. It was a real thrill to catch one so distinctively different.