Harvard Banner Waved in Holyoke Street to Start Students' Phonograph Listening Marathon--Helen Kane May Officiate

Any novel kind of contest in this day of dance marathons and bunion derbies seems highly improbable, and yet today in Cambridge something unique in the field of competitions, a phonograph listening marathon, is to be started. Promptly at 3 o'clock two Harvard students are to take their places in the windows of the Music Box, Cambridge's tiny shop on Holyoke Street, and there begin to listen without once stopping, to all and any one of the some 5000 odd records which the Music Box has in store.

Once the contest is started the men will sit down in the upholstered chairs provided for them and proceed to see which one of them can listen to the "canned music" without falling asleep or getting exasperated. A prize of $25 goes to the winner while the loser will collect $10 as a consolation prize. Meals and cigarettes will be furnished the men but they will not be allowed to do any reading except that they may peruse the books which are in the Music Box. These however are Victor Talking Machine Company's book. "What we hear in Music", and the "Book of the Opera".

Nelson Bell, proprietor of the shop expects the contest to last probably 36 hours and he has calculated that each man will drop the tone arm down on both sides of at least 1000 records.

The contest will be officially opened by either Frank Crumit or Helen Kane, star of "Good Boy", both of whom are in town. Whoever of these two acts in the capacity of official starter will stand in the middle of Holyoke Street and wave a crimson and white Harvard banner at the sign of which the two men will dash to their respective windows and begin their musical listening duel to see who is the first to go lunatic.

The contest has already received enough publicity so that Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer are sending their news cameramen to snap the listeners in action. There was also a possibility late last night that Fox Movie-tone would be on hand to record on a synchronized score the voices of the men and the music, as the phonographs grind it out.