America's Girl by Tim Dahlberg

Author:Tim Dahlberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780312382650
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

9

Channelitis Strikes

Cape Gris-Nez

The Germans greeted Trudy as one of their own, which indeed she was. Her parents had been born in this land, she had spent time there as a child, and now she was returning as the long-lost daughter who had made good. Thirty thousand people jammed the train station at Stuttgart to see her arrive, and she was mobbed in a motorcade that went off through the city streets as people pushed forward in a never-ending line, trying to get close enough to see her or maybe even shake her hand.

Her father and sister were with her, along with Harpman, who chronicled the postswim tour for the readers back home in the Daily News. But Harpman didn’t have this playing field to herself, as newspapermen and photographers from around the Continent vied to get a scoop or a photo that would satisfy the seemingly insatiable demand for anything that had to do with the girl who had swum the Channel.

Dudley Malone, meanwhile, arrived in Eu rope on the liner France with fifteen tele grams in hand offering Trudy different endorsements and employment. Disembarking at Cherbourg, he used the occasion to warn the press who greeted him to stop writing stories that their papers made look as if they were written by Ederle—unless they came up with some money for the rights to her personal pieces.

“One thing I want you boys to get straight right now,” he declared to reporters, “there was only one newspaper agency directly associated with and behind Trudy on her swim to fame—the News and Chicago Tribune. They are the only ones authorized by me to use signed stories by Trudy.”

Not for much longer they weren’t. Malone hadn’t gotten to be a rich lawyer by overlooking contractual details, and the deal with the newspapers called for them to get firsthand stories and photos only through the conclusion of the swim itself, something the papers had somehow overlooked in their haste to hitch their star to Ederle’s. With demand great for anything related to the swimmer, Gallico was dispatched to see Malone before he left for Eu rope to try to get an extension of his newspaper’s deal.

Gallico was a better sportswriter than he was a negotiator, and he was outmatched when it came to Malone. It didn’t help that all the newspapers were offering was a small pittance to keep the right to exclusive material, while Malone knew a hot property when he saw one. He demanded several thousand dollars, a figure Gallico had no way of agreeing to, and soon it was a free-for-all for the media wanting to tell Trudy’s story.

Malone would make mistakes—and a lot of them—in the coming months, but his initial instincts were correct that Trudy should go home on the earliest boat and strike while things were hot. The playboy mayor of New York, Jimmy Walker, had already committed to a welcoming ceremony, and Malone knew that the time to capitalize on all the endorsement offers was when the hysteria over her accomplishment was at its zenith.

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