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Relay. Last week's opening ceremonies were the last stage in a concentrated year-long ballyhoo which made the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, loudest previous sports event in history, seem, by comparison, as quiet as a race between two trained fleas around the brim of a felt hat. Climax was the Torch Relay from Olympia to Berlin which started fortnight ago, after the sun's rays had been used to kindle a fire in the ruins of the Temple of Zeus. At Paracin, Yugoslavia, last week, the flame went out when a runner got a defective torch which burned only two minutes. Faced with the absurd prospect of continuing the Torch Relay without a torch, he scrambled quickly into an automobile, rode on to the next relay point. Re-lit, the flame crossed the Hungarian border at 6 a. m., reached Budapest in the evening. Next day, its progress through Austria was the occasion for a great Austrian Nazi demonstration (see p. 24). At Prague, Czechoslovakian President Eduard ("Europe's Smartest Little Statesman") Benes found in a change of runners the theme for a speech about Olympic Ideals and World Peace. Scrupulously photographed during its progress by members of the staff of 150 cameramen who are helping Cinemactress Riefenstahl make a prodigious Olympic Film to be released next year, the torch crossed the German border at the village of Hellendorf in Saxony. At noon on the opening day of the Games it reached Berlin.
While the ceremonious procession of the Torch Relay made big news in Europe, it was overshadowed in the U. S. Press last week by other doings in Berlin. Unwilling to permit the approach of the Olympic Games themselves to dampen their enthusiasm, U. S. athletes and their keepers continued to behave as unpredictably as ever.
Royalty. Ruled off the U. S. swimming team for drinking last fortnight, Eleanor Holm Jarrett last week went for a sight-seeing stroll with a friend, met onetime Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor August Ernst at Netherlands Palace. Their chat in English: Prince: Is that the famous swimmer? ... I have heard so much about you.
Swimmer: Gee, I just can't grasp that I'm in a palace talking to royalty. Why Prince, you're so human—just like we other folks. I never thought you looked so young or could act so natural. I came into this room trembling all over. You made me feel at home immediately.
Won't I high-hat those other Olympic girls! I'll tell them: "You just go on and do your swimming. You can win the gold medals. I'm meanwhile being received by royalty."
Prince: You certainly know how to take life from the bright side. . . .
Swimmer: . . . Now I'm here seeing all these nice paintings of your father and your mother and your ancestors, I quite forget all about the Olympics. Why, Your Royal Highness, you ought to go into the movies. You have an ideal face for pictures.
Prince (to Mrs. Jarrett's escort): Die junge Frau ist zu komisch.
Two days later in an article about the Olympics for Hearst's International News Service, Swimmer Jarrett reported that the onetime Crown Prince had sent her flowers. In New York, her husband, Crooner Art Jarrett, suddenly took ship for Germany.