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Norah Carpenter's introduction to the U.S. was just what she might have expected from the grade-B cinemas she had seen back home in Heanor, England. The British barmaid who bore wartime quadruplets to Sergeant William H. Thompson (now a Pittsburgh pressman) deplaned in New York with three surviving children to join her "Red" and to marry him at last (his wife divorced him last April). But Red was not at the airport. Hearst-men hustled Norah and the kids to a house in nearby Elmhurst, where Red was waiting, and got a juicy exclusive of the reunion. In a supervised clinch, Norah breathed: "My darling, I'm so happy to see you." Red murmured: "Hello." Moppet Maureen obligingly popped out with: "Daddy!" The kids seemed to feel right at home from the first; but when the party got to Pittsburgh next day to meet Red's family, Norah, her head full of reporters and crowds, fainted dead away.
Mistinguett, ancient (past threescore & ten) musicomedienne whose face admits it but whose imperishable legs don't, was the cause of a rare brouhaha in Paris. The story came from southern France that she was at last remarried—to Lino Carenzio, a young Italian tenor. But the darling of the Casino de Paris spoiled the fun by saying that it just wasn't so; only "a charming joke."
Delayed Action
Al Capp, cartoonist creator of Li'l Abner (see PRESS), arrived in Halifax with hot news for his fans: he had been in Britain, collecting atmosphere for a forthcoming visit there by the Yokums of Dogpatch. The plot: Mammy & Pappy Yokum will see something in an old newspaper about a varmint named Hitler, and will hurry overseas to warn their British cousins of the danger.
Kathleen Winsor's jumbo platter of sex, Forever Amber, finally off the bestseller lists after nearly two years, got an extra helping of publicity. It had abruptly disappeared from Boston bookstores the week of publication in October 1944; last week the rest of Massachusetts legally banned it.
Antagonists
W. Lee ("Pappy") O'Daniel, Texas' hillbilly Senator, and his good-looking, screen-tested son Mike got off a well-coordinated one-two punch. While Pappy filibustered against OPA extension, Landlord Mike, in Dallas, upped a veteran's rent from $67.50 to $100, then served an eviction notice. The local American Veterans Committee chapter, fighting mad, slapped a 60-man picket line around Mike's property, hired a lawyer to fight the eviction.
Chester Bowles, four days before the effective date of his resignation as Stabilization Director, was off from Portland (Me.) to spend a month on a 39-ft. yawl, out where the only ceiling is the sky.
Cold Cash
Major Edward ("Amateur Hour") Bowes, late radio showman, willed an estimated $3 million to Manhattan's St. Patrick's Cathedral, in care of his good friend Cardinal Spellman. The money, Bowes directed, should be used for charity and for "beautification of the interior and exterior of St. Patrick's" (already in process of exterior beautification and strengthening on account of "the ravages of time").*
Bing Crosby, whose annual gross earnings run well into six figures, stopped off at Boise, Idaho to pay a college classmate, now a sporting-goods storekeeper, the $11.04 he had owed him since 1924.
Flyers