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As "Nancy Randolph" of the News, Reporter Robb had a hand in hatching Manhattan's iridescent cafe society from its hard-shelled, speakeasy stage, but she has never succumbed entirely to its lures. She loves dancing—"It is my vice"—but she generally gets home by 12 or 1 to her fifth-floor apartment off lower Fifth Avenue, where her husband rarely waits up for her. (Because he has his own job —with Prudential Insurance Co.—he escorts her to El Morocco and the Stork Club only on Fridays and Saturdays.) At home she has a collection of demi-tasse cups from special assignments — one from Tours, near the chateau where the Windsors were married, one from the maker of King George's coronation china — her favored Chinese rugs, simple prints, easy chairs, and stacks of white gloves ("A society writer can always get by on clean gloves") and "silly" hats ("With my face it doesn't matter").
Quiet, even-tempered Husband "Ad" Robb is a writer on his own account, once ghosted a book called I Was Condemned to the Chair, by Edward F. McGrath. Last week he insisted that his wife undergo a hospital check-up before starting her new job; was pleased when doctors pronounced her fit. Once his solicitude proved embarrassing. When his wife was running for chairman of the News unit of the Newspaper Guild, he killed her chances by printing paper match covers boosting her candidacy, distributing them to the staff. Fellow Newshawks remember Inez Robb better, though, for the frenzied inaccuracy with which she swung at the well-smacked chin of famed Sports Editor Jimmy Powers* the morning after he allotted her a remote gallery seat for the crowded finals of the News-sponsored Golden Gloves tournament. For that feat, admiring staff members presented her with what is now her favorite piece of jewelry, a small gold charm bearing the letters UROK.
* Four months earlier Editor Powers was lambasted by two male colleagues.