Douglas Daily Dispatch

Manhattan Nichts Neues

The ranks of the bad guessers, already filled with theatre producers who couldn't see in "Street Scene" a successful play, have been augmented by publishers who turned down the American rights to Erich Maria Remarque's German war novel "All Quiet on the Western Front."

Remarque, it seems, first offered his novel to Fischer, predominantly the great publisher of Germany, who refused it after his manuscript readers had recommended its publication. Then Remarque took the script to Ullstein, who decided to publish it against the advice of his subordinates.

When "All Quiet" began to attract attention in Germany and England a reader for a New York publisher got a copy, perused it, and urged his chief to acquire the American rights. That eminent informed him brusquely that the firm wasn't interested in any German novels.

Another New York publisher read the book and passed it up on his own responsibility. A third rather liked it but held out for a better translation.

Meanwhile the president of the Boston publishing concern which finally brought out the book in the United States had seen enthusiastic reviews of it in a Berlin and a London newspaper. On the strength of the reviews he bought the American rights to the novel without even having read it.