Introduction Service

May 22, 1946

Business can be fun department: A young lady known professionally as Jean Merrick has been operating what she calls an Introduction Service on Madison Avenue here in New York. She not only calls it an Introduction Service, but insists that her clients call it that too. She doesn’t like, she says . . . names like lonely hearts club or date bureau. The Introduction Service is more like an exclusive little fraternity . . . her words. I gather that its quality of exclusiveness derives from carefully excluding all those who don’t pay dues. Anyway you get the idea. Lonely . . . and we should add to make it sound better . . . unattached man comes to New York . . . he sees Jean Merrick’s ad and comes in and asks to be introduced. But to whom? Well, it goes without saying . . . introduced to a lady he can take out. Often these little friendships ripen into love . . . to phrase a coin . . . and a marriage results. There are many little enterprises like this going on as paying propositions and Miss Merrick’s would probably never have scored a news item except that one day, not long ago, a gentleman . . . ere . . . shall we say was pledged to membership and Miss Merrick had lined up a suitable date for him. Don’t get the idea that this is a date bureau. But it was a date, nevertheless. However, on the day of the fateful date the party of the second part called Miss Merrick and said she couldn’t make it. Miss Merrick, who is too good a business woman ever to disappoint a customer . . . pinch hit. She was the date . . . and natch natch . . . you guessed it. Friendship ripened etcetera and now Miss Jean Merrick in Mrs. Stanley Wood Blake . . . just back from a Canadian honeymoon and no doubt more full of ginger than ever to carry on the exclusive little fraternity. Jean’s mother operates a similar service in San Francisco. As we go to press there is no word that momma Merrick has had to throw herself into her work as her daughter has.