Evening Star Newspaper, January 6, 1935, Page 71

. , DR.Prran, Lire Begins LonG Berore 40 - . HOUGH Dr. Walter B. Pitkin may have con- vinced many people that life begins at 40, isn't it possible to prove that honors are being won, important posts are being filled, and great literary, artistic and scientific works are being produced by bright young people to whom nursery days are still a vivid memory? And, while it is customary to think of doddering old gray- beards as the sponsors of our laws, the heads of our scholastic institutions and the authors of our econcmic tracts, isn't it really true that some of our most bril- liant of these people showed great promise while yet in their teens and achieved indisputable fame years before they had reached the two-score mark? Since most people will concede the fact that in Hollywood today life begins practically in the eradle, what with such stars as Shirley Temple, Baby Le Roy and Jackie Cooper holding the fort, and since youth unquestion= ably lends an added charm to the heroes and heroines of the legitimate stage—think of the early triumphs of Helen Hayes, Helen Chandler, June Walker, Sylvia Sydney, Kenneth Mec- Kenna and Francis Lederer—it's not necessary to go into any de- tails to show that all the world loves to gaze upon the freshness and vivacity which inevitably disappears with the relentless passage of the years. But when it's a matter of the ability to lead one's fellowmen, to make great discoveries, to compose great symphonies, to write great masterpieces, what have young people con- tributed? Have they produced finished prod- ucts in their respective lines or have they had to wait for full maturity to prove their real worth? HESE very questions are being raised right now in the age vs. youth controversy which is centered around the persons of that militant champion of the New Deal, Rush Dew Holt of West Virginia, who, at 29, was elected Sena- tor last November over the veteran old guards- man, Henry D. Hatfield. While Senate life should not begin before 30. according to the Constitution, and while the average age of that august body is in the neighborhood of 57, young Holt has an il- lustrous precedent in Henry Clay of Kentucky, who, at 29, in 1806, was allowed to fill an un- expired term by ‘“senatorial courtesy.” While Holt does not have a national reputa- tion in politics or debate comparable to Clay’s, this new “baby Senator” has previously got himself into plenty of trouble because he was considered “too young” for what he wanted to do. At 15, when he presented himself in knee pants for admittance to the University of Cin- cinnati, his application was rejected. But he managed to enter the University of West Vir- ginia and then transferred to Salem College in Salrm, W. Va. After his graduation at 18, he begen teaching school at Bedford City, Va., where some of his pupils were as old as their teacher. The young pedagogue did not lose heart, however, and, after coaching foot ball and basket ball at St. Patrick's High School in his hcme town of Weston, he got himself electcd to the State Legislatur2 in 1932 when he was only 27, Rush Holt becomes the youngest man in the Senate, thus displacing Senator Richard B, Russell, who toddled up from Georgia three years ago when he was 34 to wrest juvenile honors from Robert Marion La Follette, jr. When Bob La Follette was elected to the Senate to fil the unexpired tetm of his fighting father in 1925, he was just seven months past 30 and was then dubbed “the youngest Senator since Henry Clay.” Today Bob La Follette is almost 40, but life began years ago for him, as it did for his brother, Philin Fox La Follette, who became Governor of Wisconsin, the home of all the progressive La Follettes, at the age of 3¢ in 1931, Life begins especially early in Holly- wood—as the cases of Shirley Temple and Baby Le Roy, above, prove. In the fields of science, politics, music, education, youth is firmly in the saddle, while in Hollywood big careers begin in the cradle and was recently alected for another term. There are other young funs in the Senate. There's Gerald Nye of North Dakota, a news- paper publisher at 19 and a Senator at 33; there's Millard Tydings, the ex- tremely eligible Maryland bachelor who was the Speaker of his State Sen- ate at 32 & United States Representative at 33 and a Senator at 87; and there's the highly renowned Huey Pierce Long, who, though Governor of Louisiana in 1928 and a United States Senator since 1931, just celebrated two-score years late last Summer, HOUGH these young men may look for precedent to Alexander the Great, who con- quered the then known world at 30; to Napoleon, who became Emperor of France at 32, and to Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Dec- laration of Independence before he was 35, there are others who do not care who writes a nation’s laws as long as they can write its songs. Here, too, youth holds sway, for perhaps the most popular tunester in our land today is George Gershwin, whose “Rhapsody in Blue” brought him fame and fortune when he was only 25 years old. Now that Gershwin has reached the advanced age of 36, his name is as well known as that of the most widely adver- tised food products, and he can look back on a career that might be envied by any man of 70. Not only has he composed the music for any number of musical comedies, for which his brother Ira, not much older, supplied the lyrics, but he has had his more serious works like the “American in Paris” and the “Concerto in F” played by the best symphonic ensembles. Nor is Gershwin the only youngster in the realm cf musical writing. In musical comedy there are those irrepressible minstrels, Larry Hart, Richard Rogers and, of course, Dorothy Fields, whose “Hallelujah” has become almost a classic. And in the symphonic field we have such talents as Roy Harris, Roger Sessions and Aaron Copland. In case some one will say that these are exceptions to the rule, that in music many a prodigy turns sour and practically none of thern live up to the expectations of their doting parents and their hopeful teachers, Josef Hofmann, himself a prodigy who has continued THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., JANUARY 6, 1935. Helen Hayes, who was fairly tiny when she actress. Ceorge Gershwin, at 36, is one of America’'s most famed composers and, like most musicians, he began very young indeed, to be a supreme master ever since he made his debut at the age of 9, back in 1885, is ready to testify that the great musical artists of today as well as of the past all started early. Liszt played in public at 6. Mozart at 4 tapped out a minuet of his own composition and at 8 had produced six sonatas and three symphonies; Felix Mendelssohn at 13 had written 50 movements and at 15 had com- pleted his fourth opera; Niccolo Paganini at 9 wrote violin compositions so difficult that no one else could play them; Haydn, Schubert, Meyerbeer and Handel all showed their creative genius before they had reached their tenth birthdays. And the same is true of our great perform- ers today. We have brilliant prodigies like Yehudi Menuhin, who took violin lessons at 4, was ‘a soloist with the San Francisco Orchestra at 6, and today at 18 forces critics and laymen alike to gasp that he plays not only like an angel but like a god, with perfection and true genius. Kreisler first appeared in public at 13; Zim- balist at 17. Paderewski gave his first concert at 9 and was a professor at 18; Hofmann was taken off the stage by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children at the age of 11, but was allowed to return at a triumphant recital in London when he was 18, and Vladimir Horowitz, the superb pianist, is only 28 now. Perhaps the Pitkinites will answer that music is an art which is either born in a human being or not, and will ask about the scholastic world where gray matter is all im- portant and ideas rule. Here, too, there are a good many top- notchers recruited from the ranks of youth. An outstanding example in education is Robert Maynard Hutchins, who was called to head the University of Chicago in 1929 when he was 30. This man, who holds the distinction of being the youngest major college prexy in the first saw the footlights and who, still youth- ful, is acclaimed as Hollywood's premier country, worked his way through Yale, where he won the De Forest oratorical prize, and was made dean of the Yale Law School at 27.. PERHAPS the success of youth in the field of science is even more astounding. Yet some of the Nobel prizes for physics have in recent years gone to men born after the dawn of our century. In 1933 the Nobel physics prize went to Dr. P. A. M. Dirac, who at 28 had caused a sensa~ tion before the British Association for the Advancement of Science by propounding a new atomic theory. Two years later, in 1932, the award went to Prof. Werner Heisenberg, who, though born in 1900, had been acclaimed a8 the most fertile contributor to the quantum theory in Germany. The great Albert Einstein himself, today past 50, began his iconoclastic studies of relativity at the age of 26, was made professor of physics at Zurich four years later and was given the chair of physics at Prague when he was 32, There’s also Arthur H. Compton, who won the Nobel prize in physics at 35. ‘There are also many writers of novels and plays who got to work early in life. Perhaps the most precocious ‘of them all is Noel Coward, who, at 35, is famous as an actor, a lyricist, & composer, a stage director and one of the rich= est playwrights alive, since he is reputed to have made $5,000,000 from his writings alone. Coward was a real child prodigy; he sang ballads in public at 9, acted in a children’s fairy play, “The Goldfish,” at 10, and toured the English countryside with a group of young- sters a couple of years later. Born of “musical tradespeople” who sold banjos, mouth organs and sheet music near London, Coward had a natural bent for music. He soon began com- posing songs and writing plays, but it was not until after the war that he really began to be talked about. Today, with such successes as “Cavalcade” and “Design for Living” to his credit, he no longer needs to borrow from his stanch friends and admirers, Lynne Fontanne and Alfred Lunt. In America the man who has been called the dean of playwrights, Eugere O'Neill, is 46 years old now, but he won a public many years ago. Twelve years ago he was givén the Pulitzer Prize for “Anna Christie” and many of his best plays, like “Emperor Jones,” “The Hairy Ape™ and “Desire Under the Elms,” were written when he was in his early thirties. What's more, life has been very full for O’Neill, for he has been a business man, a reporter and a vaude= ville actor as well as a playwright. There are other American playwrights who have written successes in early youth. Elmer Rice, who has just denounced the critics and the standards of commercial Broadway n dramatic terms and has announced lis resigna- tion from the theater at the ripe old age of 43, made his first sensation with “On Trial” back in 1914 when he was a mere lad of 22. PFifteen years later they gave him the Pulitzer Prise for “Street Scene.” : 'O NAME the younger authors would take too much space. It's sufficient to remark that the Pulitzer prizes for fiction and drama last year went to Carolyn Miller and Sidney Kingsley, both years under 40, and to remember that such men as Ernest Hemingway and Michael Arlen have not yet lived two-score years. It's impossible to enumerate all the bright boys and girls in all the fields. Only recently a youngster named Peter Blume ran off with the first prize at the Carfegie Art Institute in Pittsburgh for his puzzling canvas, “South ef Scranton,” thus following in the line of such masters as Matisse, Picasso and Pascin. Nor have we been able to touch all the fields in which life begins long before 40. One eof them is prize fighting, but then everybody knows that for men like Max Baer and Eugene Tunney, the first 40 years may be the hardest, but they are also the best. i -