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Luscious Patricia Morison, who was on her uppers in filmdom before she romped and trilled through the Broadway smash Kiss Me, Kate, noted a change in the California climate: "A week or so ago when I sang at the Hollywood Bowl . . . people who used to nod and say 'Hello, Pat' . . . came dashing backstage and threw their arms around me, shouting 'Dahling, you were wonderful!' "
In Madison for the unveiling of a scale model of the U.S.S. Wisconsin, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy recalled that he was once all set to enter the U. of Wisconsin law school: "I was all signed up. But somehow I got tangled up with the Navy and here I am. I never would have been worth a darn as a lawyer anyway."
Shock-haired, baggy-trousered British Poet Stephen Spender was also off on a nostalgia jag. "Science has provided man with the means ... of complete destruction," he told a Harvard poetry conference. "What has always been the essential condition for creating poetry—the assurance of a continuity in civilization—is lost."
Hollywood Gossipist Hedda Hopper led with her chin, bravely recorded the result: "When I wrote that I didn't understand why Louis Calhern and Nina Foch wanted to do King Lear on Broadway," she reported, "I got the following note from James T. Burns Jr. of Columbia University: 'The reason artists like Calhern and Foch choose to star in Lear instead of staying in California to portray defunct cattle barons and brilliantined cuties is approximately the same reason a gifted writer would prefer to become a Wolcott Gibbs instead of a Hedda Hopper.'"