National Affairs: Custody

Custody When blonde beauteous Katharine Winterbotham Buchanan, 49, married an Indian Oxonian from Madras named Kumar Jehan Seesodia-Warliker last May, Chicago society, startled, warmly debated the race issue. But the union outraged the bride’s divorced husband, Thompson Buchanan, who had himself meantime displayed an adventurous spirit by marrying Authoress Joan (Cradle of the Deep) Lowell. He marched into a Kentucky court, asked and got custody of his 9-year-old son and namesake on the ground that Seesodia-Warliker, no Caucasian, was unfit to keep the boy.

With Thompson Buchanan Jr. the Seesodia-Warlikers went to Ontario, closely followed by Mrs. Buchanan-Warliker’s brother who also laid claim to his young nephew. Before an Ontario Supreme Court Judge last week was the Solomonic question of turning the youngster over to his Hollywoodish father, his coffee-colored stepfather or his socialite uncle from Chicago.