• U.S.

People: People, Jan. 20, 1941

3 minute read
TIME

Off the S.S. Exeter, which brought his France-loving sister Anne back to Manhattan, charged Banker J. P. Morgan. Passing a phalanx of photographers, he roared: “Out of the way, you devils.” One photographer popped his flash (see cut), ducked, apologized: “I’m sorry I have to do this, Mr. Morgan.” Snorted Banker Morgan: “Why the hell do you have to?”

From pink-haired Amateurophant Major Edward Bowes’s $38,000 Chrysler, while it stood in a Manhattan garage, thieves snaffled six gold spoons, six gold cocktail forks, twelve gold-rimmed cocktail and sherbet glasses in Dirigold containers, two gold corkscrews, a fox robe, a jade-handled cigaret lighter. They left a small bar, desk, refrigerator, collapsible serving table (made to serve meals for six), two radios, an electric razor, a compass, an altimeter.

Bound for France with 10,000 vitamin A & D capsules and 3,000 vitamin B capsules in a neatly navicerted package, bony Parisian Designer Elsa Schiaparelli was stopped at Bermuda by British customs men, frisked of every pill. Though British diplomats in Washington soon got their impulsive colleagues to forward the capsules, they had a job of explaining to the American Friends Service Committee, for whom Mme. Schiaparelli bore the gifts for unoccupied France.

Observing the tenth anniversary of the Musicians Emergency Fund. Manhattan musicians staged a “Grand Celebration of the 100th Anniversary of Dr. Damrosch’s Music Appreciation Hour over the Radio, 1841-1941.” The director, never beaming more ruddily and certainly looking younger than the program’s name indicated, was 78-year-old Maestro Walter Damrosch himself. Before starting his lecture, twinkly-eyed Dr. Damrosch had pranced across to Mrs. Huntington Astor, Fund president, genuflected and kissed her hand.

In Manila, restless little Philippine President Manuel Quezon, gaining strength slowly after a recent illness, had a nurse read him a biography of Stalin. “It lulls me to sleep,” said he.

In Philadelphia, as 30 policemen pushed back a big crowd outside the Baptist Temple, the bomb squad went gingerly to work on a package left suspiciously in a doorway and addressed to the Temple’s famed Pastor Daniel Alfred Poling, president of Christian Endeavor and editor of the Christian Herald. They soaked it well in a bucket of oil. Then they extracted a set of Preacher Poling’s sermons, left tardily by a printer’s boy.

Harry Gordon Selfridge Jr. is the handsome, jaunty, sporting son and namesake of London’s Wisconsin-born onetime department-store tycoon. Arriving in the U. S. last winter he got a job with Federated Department Stores, Inc. of New York, in June married Miss Charlotte Elsie Dennis, set up house at Darien, Conn. Last week a friend blurted to a Chicago Herald-American reporter that Selfridge and “Miss Dennis” were married secretly 16 years ago, had four children (aged 15, 13, 11 and 8)—all living in Darien, had kept all secret ever since. Said Mrs. Selfridge: “We had our own reasons, which are not good for printing.”

Called by a draft board, Daniel Topping, 29, socialite owner of the Brooklyn (football) Dodgers and husband of Skater Sonja Henie, planned to ask exemption. Grounds: “Who would manage the box office if I were away?”

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