• U.S.

People: People, Dec. 16, 1946

7 minute read
TIME

Movers & Shakers

William Shakespeare had had better weeks. In Stratford-on-Avon, a fire in the town hall destroyed the famed Gainsborough painting of the Bard’s bust being leaned on by Actor David Garrick. In Chicago, Music Boss James Caesar Petrillo declared that Maurice Evans’ Hamlet with incidental music was not a drama but a musical (and thus the incidental musicians got a pay boost).

Mark Twain was doing all right. A Tom Sawyer manuscript that had sold for $1,850 ten years ago was auctioned in Manhattan for $2,400.

Ernest Hemingway was having the time of his life. Just arrived in Manhattan from Idaho, where he had been shooting duck, he skipped off to Gardiner’s Island, N.Y. as the guest of Poloist Winston Guest, to shoot duck.

A measure of solitude was in prospect for French Historian Bernard Faÿ (The Revolutionary Spirit in France and America; George Washington: Republican Aristocrat), onetime lecturer in U.S. universities. For compiling a giant list of French Freemasons which the Gestapo used as a directory for arrests and executions, Scholar Faÿ was sentenced in Paris to life imprisonment at hard labor.

Correspondent Eiliott Roosevelt, who with wife Faye visited Stalin’s birthplace in Georgia (Russia), made no comment on another correspondent’s explanation of how Elliott’s conversational digs at the U.S. (TIME, Dec. 9) got back home. The little bird who told, reported inside dopester Henry J. Taylor, was an Embassy secretary and ex-WAC named Ruth M. Briggs, who used to be Elliott’s friend back in North Africa.

Meditation on the ghostwriting of presidential speeches moved Novelist James Hilton (Lost Horizon) to a startling proposal. Why stop at speechwriting? he demanded in the Atlantic. “The late President was fortunate in having a magical radio personality; but for some future President who hasn’t,” Hilton tactfully put it, “why not borrow a Voice? And the step after that would be the Face—obviously one chosen for its photogenic qualities. . . . Thus would be evolved a composite of assorted perfections. . . .”

Just Folks

Darryl Zanuck was in hospital overnight—hand injured by a flying polo ball. Tommy Manville asked the police of Westchester County, N.Y. to please find his eighth wife. He said she was last seen on the Boston Post Road with two suitcases.

Leo (“Lippy”) Durocher’s friendship with Cinemactress Laraine Day (TIME, Dec. 9) drew memorable prose from the actress’ husband, James Ray Hendricks, who filed a bitter answer to her divorce petition. Deposed the husband, recalling an evening at home: “Laraine and this Durocher were sitting on a chaise longue and were in very close proximity. At this point I became exceedingly apprehensive of his good motives and honorable conduct as concerned my wife.” The very next night, said Hendricks, when his wife returned from a date with Durocher, her first words were: “I want a separation.”

Hard-to-forget words also came from 20-year-old blonde Cinemactress June Haver, who cooled off the notion that an actress must have suffered in order to be great. “Surely, one doesn’t have to have hollows in one’s face to be a great actress,” said she. “Jennifer Jones played a wonderful death scene in The Song of Bernadette without ever having died.”

Crystal-clear colloquial speech was Frank Sinatra’s response to Hollywood Columnist Erskme Johnson, who had tutted the Voice for his “temperament.” Wired forthright Frankie (140 Ibs.) from Manhattan: “Just continue to print lies about me, and my temper—not my temperament—will see that you get a belt in your vicious and stupid mouth.” Johnson offered to do battle either in a stadium or his office (“Don’t bother to open the door, Frankie, just come through the crack”).

The Voice’s recent decision to bar kids from his Manhattan broadcasts brought an Amen from Van Johnson, who complained: “Those kids in New York make life miserable for you.” The California kids, said he, were different: “When I was on location in Santa Cruz and Angels Camp, they were wonderful—even called me ‘Mr. Johnson.’ ”

The Very Best

The Duke & Duchess of Windsor, for a change, were doing all right with the U.S. press. The Duke was being pretty much ignored. But not the Duchess. At a Manhattan auditorium to help judge a Little Sister Beauty Contest for the Boys’ Club, she set a star-studded coronet on the winner’s head, sat next to a gilded throne. The press played it straight. The tabloid Sunday Mirror’s gift to the couple for the Duke’s abdication anniversary (the tenth) was an unmalicious interview. Asked the I.N.S.’s high-styled Inez Robb: Would they do it all over again? Replied the Duke: “We’d do it!” When they are at home, reported Miss Robb, the Duchess often whips up a Sunday night supper with her own hands. And the Duke himself gets out the card table and sets it. “Now,” Miss Robb quoted the Duke, “we’re just a very happy middle-aged couple.”

Thomas Horatio Nelson, 88, the fourth Earl Nelson, was disappointed by the news from the House of Commons. It had approved a plan to end the £5,000-a year pension the nation had been paying for 140 years to the descendants of Admiral Horatio Nelson’s brother. The money would stop when descendant Thomas Horatio and younger brother Edward died. It was too bad. Also the Nelsons thought it was rather unnecessary to bring up in the House of Commons the name of that woman, Lady Hamilton, the Admiral’s mistress (who got no pension and died broke).

William Humble Eric Ward, 52, the third Earl of Dudley, steelmaker, banker, mine owner, old friend (and recent host) of the Windsors, was brought to court in London for heaving a brick through the windshield of Henry Algernon Claude Graves, 69, the seventh Baron Graves (who works as a bookie—”It amuses me”). Explained the Earl: the Baron’s locked car had blocked his way out of his garage, and he had to get at the brake before he could shove it away. The Earl, who had been in court before,* was fined £5, plus £2 95. damages and £10 105. costs.

Winners

To Ingrid Bergman went an honor that was unlikely to provoke public controversy: the International Sound Research Institute gave her its annual award for good diction.

Justice Robert H. Jackson of the U.S. Supreme Court also came through with flying colors: from Western Maryland College he got an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

From George VI to Viscounts Mountbatten, Alanbroolce, Portal, Alexander, and Montgomery, for distinguished war service, went the ancient Order of the Garter.†

Two other warriors also won awards of a sort. General Dwight D. Eisenhower got a month’s leave of absence—his first in eleven years, except for one week last July and two days last May. He would spend it in Miami, getting hospital treatment for bursitis (inflammation) in the shoulder. And Fleet Admiral William F. (“Bull”) Halsey, 64, who had long wanted it, was finally allowed to be “relieved of active participation in the Navy.”** The dog-jawed Pacific hero, recovering in a Manhattan hospital after a hernia operation, was not retired, because fleet admirals are just not retired; officially he remained on call, and would go on drawing full pay.

* First time was in 1914, for playing polo on a bike in the street. † Also Gartered: Viscounts Cranborne and Addison, wartime and current leaders of the House of Lords. ** Five-star warriors “relieved” so far: General George C. Marshall, General Henry H. Arnold, Admiral Ernest J. King.

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