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Wrote one Edward G. Ekdahl to Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt after Johns-Manville paid her $3,000 for a six-minute commercial broadcast: "This continuous publicity of large and easy earnings . . . has upset the young American mind. . . . The writer has yet to be shown where anyone is worth $500 a minute.'' Replied Broadcaster Roosevelt: "I think you are entirely right that no one is worth $500 a minute. ... I do not feel that this money is paid to me as an individual, but that it is paid to the President's wife. It is not paid to me directly, but to the agency which will spend it."* Fitting a silver wig over her shaven pate (TIME, April 2), Mrs. Lucy Cotton Thomas Ament Hann Magraw, thrice married since the death of her first husband, Publisher Edward Russell Thomas of the New York Morning Telegraph, gave a birthday party for her 9-year-old daughter Lucetta Thomas. Upstairs in the Magraws' Manhattan duplex apartment, Lucetta. who receives an $80,000 per year income from her grandfather's estate, entertained eight small friends with games, ice cream, cake. Said prideful Foster-Father Magraw: "She speaks French like a native. She rows boats, plays tennis ... is an expert swimmer ... is a sculptress . . . can draw — even comics. ... If she didn't have a cent, I wouldn't worry about her making a living." Downstairs, Mrs. Magraw, onetime actress (Up In Mabel's Room), entertained 600 adult guests, including Publisher Conde Nast, Artist Howard Chandler Christy, Socialite Mrs. S. Stanwood Menken, at a seven-hour musicale. Once she had to run up and warn the romping children: "Great masterpieces are being played. And plaster is falling on the piano." Each guest paid $2.50 to go to Lucetta's birthday party. Proceeds, some $1,500. went to wavy-haired Pianist Frank Bishop, silver-wigged Mrs. Thomas Ament Hann Magraw's protege.
*American Friends' Service Committee of Philadelphia, a Quaker charity board which does relief work among destitute West Virginia coal miners.