Change of Pace
Brock Pemberton, veteran producer of Broadway plays—Kiss the Boys Goodbye (1938), Harvey (1944)—stepped before the klieg lights for a Hollywood screen test. "I don't expect anything will come of it," he grumbled afterwards. "I just did it for the experience ... I imagine that my investment of some $5 for renting [a costume] will be wasted."
Harrison ("Bones") Dillard, world-record hurdler and Olympic-champion sprinter, who has reaped reams of publicity on the track, took off his spikes and put on another pair of shoes: he set to work grinding out publicity for the Cleveland Indians baseball team.
Dwight Eisenhower, according to Bridge Expert Ely Culbertson, is a tough man across the bridge table: "Classic, sound, with occasional flashes of brilliance." Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson (Ike's sometime partner) also rated with Expert Culbertson as "the best player on the Supreme Court or any other." Army Chief of Staff General Omar Bradley was acknowledged "an outstanding strategist; he takes more chances than Eisenhower." Tops on Culbertson's list of Government players: Major General A. M. Gruenther, of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
"What the art world needs is to get rid of the bright people—the intellectuals," declared roughhewn Painter Thomas Hart Benton, in New Orleans on a lecture tour. "There are too many intellectuals anyway. Theoretically it's possible for an artist to be an intellectual, but it's not likely . . . Artists don't need brains."
Veteran Cinemactor Clark Gable, victim of many a make-up man and wardrobe mistress, found that he could also dish it out. At a Manhattan party, his impromptu costume designing bested the efforts of Publisher William Randolph Hearst Jr. and Violinist Nathan Milstein. Artistically flinging yard goods around bathing-suited models, Gable achieved outstanding success by making Model Charlotte Hanker appear to be having just as much fun as he was.
Change of Scene
Artist Grandma Moses, 88, who rarely strays far from Eagle Bridge, N.Y. for subject matter for her famed primitives, was unimpressed with New York City. "It's nice to be here," she admitted cautiously, "but the city don't appeal to me." "As picture material?" somebody asked. "As any material," she replied, firmly. Then she took the train down to Washington, where she got the Women's National Press Club annual award for art, and the even more impressive compliment of unwavering attention from President
Truman and six prominent U.S. women.
New York's Governor Thomas E. Dewey, on a five-week holiday in Europe, announced to British reporters: "I have no earth-shaking announcements." But this week he talked to members of the House of Commons, off the record, about the U.S. in world affairs.
Mrs. Wendell L Willkie, 58, and son Philip, 29, Indiana state legislator, were badly shaken up and bruised when their car, headed home to Rushville from Washington, skidded on a wet highway near Fairview, Ohio and overturned.