The Glamor Boys
Errol Flynn, Prince David Mdivani, "Prince Mike" Romanoff were in the crowded cast of another cafe scuffle in Hollywood. Occasion: a party for Gloria Vanderbilt and Pasquale di Cicco the night before their wedding (see p. 43). What happened: shoving, wrestling, crawling on the floor. Among the crawlers: Lupe Velez. Flynn dragged Mdivani and Romanoff out of a scrimmage. Flynn's next role: Fighter James J. Corbett. He denied any connection.
Jacob L ("Jakie") Webb, playful descendant of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, turned up in the Army, at Fort Meade, Md. He had been missing since the middle of October, shortly after he wed café-daffy Leonore Lemmon. A rubber-check charge long pending against him has been dropped.
Men's Wear
Herbert Bayard Swope, who headed the new list of the ten-best-dressed-men picked by U.S. tailors, protested: "It seems a little paradoxical and embarrassing to be talking about clothes at a time like this. There's only one well-dressed man today and that's the man in uniform." Tenth on the list: Peter Arno, last year's top man.
Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura dispatched a courier posthaste from the embassy in Washington before his departure set reporters asleuthing. With a guard of two FBI agents the courier hustled into a closed car and whisked away. His mission: the purchase of one pair of underdrawers.
Beatrice Clough Rathbone, visiting woman M.P., admired a V-for-Victory tie around the neck of New Jersey's Congressman Gordon Canfield in the House restaurant. Canfield promptly yanked it off, thrust it upon her.
Junior Division
Mickey Rooney was voted biggest money-maker for the third year running by U.S. film exhibitors. Clark Gable, never first in the poll, ran second—only star to stay among the top ten since the poll was first taken in 1931.
Patricia Hitchcock, twelve-year-old daughter of Cinedirector Alfred, looked forward to a Broadway debut, but declared: "I don't have any ambitions to be in the movies, ever." Papa said he had no ambition to direct her.
The Dionne Quintuplets prepared for their third Christmas of the season—the French Canadian whoop-te-do on New Year's. (They celebrated first on Dec. 1 for "Christmas" publicity.)
Richard Barthelmess' daughter, Mary, Leopold Stokowski's daughter, Sonya, Clive Brook's daughter, Faith, Producer Dwight Deere Wiman's daughter, Nancy, Writer Stephen Morehouse Avery's daughter, Phyllis, all played schoolgirl roles in a new Broadway show, Letters to Lucerne (see p. 47), and proved the brightest spot in it.
Word Birds
Roy Wilson (Scripps) Howard chartered his 110-ft. yacht Jamaroy to the Coast Guard for $1 a year, for the duration.
Brock Pemberton, Broadway producer, hoped aloud that critics would accept his plan to keep the theater alive in wartime. The plan: let producers tell critics when they are about to produce a show of no merit, and let the critics stay away and shut up.