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Emil Ludwig, best-selling biographer (Napoleon, Bismarck, Cleopatra, Roosevelt), whose books were once burned by the Nazis (he is a Jew), was again a banned author in Germany., This time he was verboten in the Russian zone for being too "militaristic."
Jan Valtin, ex-OGPU agent who told all in his best-selling Out of the Night (1941), was jugged (and then released) as an undesirable alien (1942), served with the armed forces in the Pacific, and finally became a U.S. citizen last January, was still roller-coastering. In New Haven, Conn., the U.S. Attorney went to court to appeal the order giving him citizenship.
Somerset Maugham, 73, who talked last winter about writing his very last book, turned some of his past profits over to the future. Set up in Britain with $60,000 of Maugham money: a foundation to give one young writer a year a trip to some foreign country.
P. G. Wodehouse, Britain's fastest-writing, longest-lasting funnyman, arrived in Manhattan with his wife (who calls him "Plummy") and their beige Pekingese, for a six-month stay that he hoped to extend. "I do think I'd like to live here for the rest of my life," said he. But he said he had some plays he hoped to get produced. His first night was rather makeshift: hotel space was spare, and large, bald Wodehouse had to sleep on a couch. Next day he discovered he couldn't take his Peke into a restaurant with him. About those light-hearted broadcasts from Nazi Germany: they were just thoughtless mistakes. Mrs. Wodehouse explained defensively: "He just didn't realize." Wodehouse, bright enough when it comes to earning his living, said he was now four books ahead of himself, and the first would be out this month: "It's utterly removed from real life."
Mabel Dodge Luhan, veteran salon-keeper and genius-collector, strangely silent after years of holding nothing back in volume after volume of Intimate Memories, was merely busy writing about her neighbors again. Out next fortnight: Taos and Its Artists. Four-times-married Mrs. Luhan, 68, still married to Pueblo Indian Tony after 24 years, talked to a reporter about domesticity and the Gadget Age. Marriage? "I have not analyzed it much for the last 30 years, but it is wonderful. It is a pleasure." Modern times? "If more machinery would break down, sort of gradually, we would all be better off."
A Ringing in the Ears
In Philadelphia, Soprano Kirsten Flagstad (who spent the war in Nazi-occupied Norway) got an ovation and boos. Outside the Academy of Music, pickets paraded; inside, stink bombs went off, detectives battled hecklers, and a free-for-all flowered in the third row orchestra.
In Albany, Baritone Paul Robeson (who likes the way the U.S.S.R. does things) had a singing date yanked out from under him by the Board of Education, which suddenly changed its mind about letting him sing in a local high school. Communist-liner Robeson's sponsors went to court, hoped to force the board to cancel its cancellation.
In Rome, the family of Tenor Beniamino Gigli (who admired the way Mussolini bossed Italy) got anonymous threats by phone and mail. Tenor Gigli, who recently testified in court against some Roman gangsters, is now singing in Switzerland. When he gets home, the threats said, he will be knocked off.