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SEPTEMBER 1955   33

became too significant to be called a tryout, and in the published book, credit is given to "the Civic Theatre, Chicago, Illinois" where it was "first produced."

The critic is inclined toward plays of originality and freshness. "Sometimes shows that shoot at the moon and fail are more interesting than those that aim at mediocrity and score a bull's-eye," she stated (New York Times, August 15, 1948).

Since 1950 the columnist has toured Europe every summer with her husband, covering places and interviewing people as well as reviewing all the important music festivals and theatrical offerings. Her book, Europe—on the Aisle (Random House, 1954), is a compilation of these European adventures. The Saturday Review (July 3, 1954) commented that "she does nice things with descriptions...it is all of interest and frequently reveals something of a soul that belies her reputations for being the Lizzie Borden of the Midwest culture circuit...for lowering the ace on the American theatrical endeavor." Her report of the season in Chicago appears in the annual edition of the The Best Plays (originally edited by Burns Mantle; now edited by Louis Kronenberger).

Miss Cassidy keeps up an active correspondence with personalities in the drama, music, and dance fields, as well as meeting the deadlines on her daily column. The cluttered living room of her small apartment, filled to the ceiling with piled records, looks more like a music shop than a residence (Theatre Arts, July 1951).

On June 16, 1929 Miss Cassidy was married to William John Crawford, a Chicago businessman. The journalist is red-haired, somewhat resembles her friend, Tallulah Bankhead, and speaks quietly with a pleasant voice. She remains serene in the midst of controversies she ignites. She is a good cook and a hearty eater. Her religion is Roman Catholic.

An enthusiastic traveler, Miss Cassidy wrote in Europe—on the Aisle that she is a bad bargainer because she does not like to see artists underpaid in any currency. "Next to Italy, which is my second home," she wrote, "I think I could love SPain best of all...we crossed twenty borders and met courtesy in all languages."

Her advice concerning the job of writing criticism, is: "Stay out of the quagmires of jargon and the deadly rut of routine. Search for informed opinion, not prejudice. Take to each new experience the fresh, undivided attention it has a right to expect if it has any claim to attention at all."

Ed & Pub 84:28 Mr 10 ’51 por 
Theatre Arts 35:14-f- JI ’51 
Time 40:38 S 28 ’42 jwr; 57:42_F 5 ’51 
Who’s Who in America, 1954-55 
Who’s Who in Chicago and Illinois (1950)

CENERAZZO, WALTER W. 1912- (sen-er-ä'zo) Labor union official

Address: b. c/o American Watch Workers Union, 479 Mood St., Waltham, Mass.

The "mainspring" of the American Watch Workers Union" is its president, Walter W. Cenerazzo, head of an independent labor organization of some 8,000 members. Cenerazzo once summarized his career in these words: "I joined a union in my teens....I started with the Typographical Union, the oldest and strongest citadel of American democracy....I have worked as a union printer in the composing rooms of 200 newspapers from Massachusetts to California; I have organized the unorganized as a representative of the American Federation of Labor and the American Watch Workers Union has done me the honor of making me its president."

In January 1949, Cenerazzo was honored by the United States Junior Chamber of Commerce as one of "the nation's ten outstanding young men of 1948" in recognition of his championship of "cooperative capitalism." He has been active in recent years in efforts to restrict the importation of Swiss watches. "Although trained as a labor organizer," Charles W. Moore wrote in Timing a Century; History of the Waltham Watch Company (1945)," Cenerazzo is predominantly an administrator and economist."

Walter W. Cenerazzo was born in Somerville, Massachusetts, near Boston, in 1912. After working as a printer, he began his career as a organizer in 1937, working for the blacksmith and candy workers unions of the AFL. The following year he organized the Gloucester Seafood Workers' Union in Massachusetts, and later became its business agent.

In 1941 he organized the employees of the Waltham Watch Company for the AFL's International Jewelry Workers' Union. However, "because of dissatisfaction with what he termed the organizing laxity of the national union," according to Fortune (January 1947), he dissolved the Waltham local of the International Jewelry Workers' Union, AFL, on October 28, 1943, and founded the Waltham Watcher Workers Union, an independent union. From Waltham he went on to organize the workers at the Elgin National Watch Company, and from there to the Hamilton Watch Company, where his union won a bargaining election decisively in May 1944.

In an article in Reader's Digest (November 1944) he wrote: "My experiences (as a union member, organizer and official) convince me that the American labor movement, in order to survive, must be democratic; and that it can be made democratic, as a whole, only by new broad national action. If that action is not taken by labor, it will be taken by law."

At a labor-management conference held in Washington in November 1945, Cenerazzo announced tentative plans for the formation of a third national federation of labor unions unaffiliated with either the AFL or CIO. Such a federation, he indicated, would be dedicated to union democracy and labor-management cooperation. "Let us demand," he asserted, "that