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Judith Anderson, now on the road with her hard-breathing Medea, admitted that she had worried about the costuming of the fate-tortured heroine. She wanted to wear the material that would best convey all the body movements to the audience. But she pooh-poohed the rumor that she considered playing Medea naked from the waist up (as Euripides intended): "My imagination never got quite that far ... Medea doesn't have the qualities of Lady Godiva."
Ben Hecht, who hates the British (he once egged on Zionist terrorists by saying in a newspaper ad that "the Jews of America make a little holiday in their hearts" whenever the British are blasted in Palestine), got some Old Testament, eye-for-an-eye treatment from his enemies. Henceforward, declared 3,500 independent British movie houses, they would no longer show any movie that Ben Hecht had had any hand in. Hecht-flavored films now current in England: Miracle of the Bells, Kiss of Death, Ride the Pink Horse.
Eric Johnston, globe-trotting customer's man for Hollywood, told a London press conference how he had persuaded Francisco Franco to lift Spain's ban on Gentleman's Agreement. Reminding the general that the ban was antiSemitic, Johnston told good Roman Catholic Franco he should be aware that "love thy neighbor" is one of the Ten Commandments. When a nosy newsman wanted to know which Commandment,* Johnston retired to safer ground, declared that he would discuss movie problems, but no more religious ones.
Brawny Ernest Hemingway was enjoying a vacation in Italy's Farewell to Arms country. Posing for a homy back-to-back shot with trim fourth wife Mary Welsh Hemingway (see cut), he seemed to be bidding for the position, vacant since the death of Heywood Broun, of sloppiest dresser in U.S. letters.
* Salesman Johnston was in the right Book but the wrong chapter; it was from Leviticus: 19: "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying . . . Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the Lord."