PEOPLE: May 30, 1927

“Names make news.” Last week the following names made the following news:

Judge Elbert Henry Gary, 81, at the American Iron & Steel Institute meeting in Manhattan, related: “A few weeks ago practicing a very foolish thing that I have been accustomed to, I put my feet up on my desk—at a directors’ meeting too, while I was thinking—my chair tipped over too far and, of course, I struck the arm of the chair in the very worst place—in the small of the back. Since that time I have not been quite up to par and my nerves were to some extent shocked I think. This morning I am feeling first rate, strong and vigorous and as happy as any man ought to be.”

Frank Tinney (stage comedian) began a Scottish bagpipe act in a second-rate Chicago cabaret, appeared to falter, was helped from the stage. Next day he said: “Tell the world I’m neither sick nor broke.”

Dr. Jason Noble Pierce (President Coolidge’s Congregational pastor in Washington, D. C.) was sued for $50,000 libel by one Howard T. Cole, U. S. Shipping Board engineer, who complained that Dr. Pierce had sent deacons to spy on his actions with young women, then charged him with moral turpitude in letters recommending his dismissal by the Shipping Board. Mr. Cole was not a member of Dr. Pierce’s church.

George Bernard Shaw announced that he had been offered, and had refused, $25,000 from a U. S. woman who only wanted him to “cross the Atlantic, dine with her, talk a little to her guests and catch the next boat home.”

Mrs. Medill McCormick (Republican national committeewoman from Illinois, daughter of the late Senator Mark A. Hanna, widow of the U. S. Senator from Illinois) addressed Westchester County women in the Hotel Commodore, Manhattan, for 15 minutes. Then she said: “I am sorry but I am going to faint,” toppled into the arms of a politician beside her, was carried from the room. Mrs. McCormick soon recovered.

Florence Walton, famed onetime wife of the late Maurice Mouvet, now dancing in a Paris revue with Georges Carpentier, was photographed with him a fortnight ago as they appeared at an Egyptian ball. M. Carpentier, painted powdered and jeweled, was dressed in satin like an Egyptian queen.

President Coolidge and “Texas” Guinan, Manhattan night club proprietress, were strangely linked by the New Student (intercollegiate clipsheet). Each had refused to give interviews to freshmen competitors for the editorial board of the Princetonian (undergraduate daily). President Coolidge was speciously said to be reluctant to meet “a reporter from a college with Princeton’s strong Democratic traditions.” Proprietress Guinan was wary because Prohibition agents had once used the ruse of a college youth seeking an interview to hand her an injunction which padlocked one of her raucous night clubs.

Mrs. Clemington Corson (distance swimmer, once Mille Gade of Denmark) talked about her profession in Copenhagen, Denmark, to a huge audience including royalty and Annette Kellerman, aging Australian “diving Venus.” King Christian X of Denmark commanded Mrs. Corson’s presence at his palace, listened to her description of swimming the English Channel, handed her a gold medal. Said she upon emerging from the audience chamber: “I cried from sheer joy.”

Anthony H. G. Fokker, upon seeing the monoplane America, which he designed and built for transatlantic flight, brought out of its hangar in a bright new coat of paint, threw up his hands and cried: “What! I spend all my time trying to take weight off the machine and they put on 40 Ib. of paint! Terrible! Terrible!”

Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, revealed that Flyer Charles Lindbergh had asked him for letters of introduction to friends in Paris who might “show him around a little.” Colonel Roosevelt complied. To Ambassador Myron Timothy Herrick he wrote: “This will introduce to you . . . a real sportsman . . . Captain Lindbergh is modest. He won’t ask you to do anything for him. If I were you, however, I would insist upon seeing something of him. . . .”

Percival Christopher Wren (British author of Beau Geste, Beau Sabreur, etc.) was co-respondent in a divorce suit won by Cyril Graham Smith, civil engineer stationed at Poona, India, from Mrs. Smith, in London.