Inside Sources
"I'm a kid who's gone in a lot for illusion," wrote leggy Literatease Gypsy Rose Lee in Variety, by way of explaining the secret of her success. Way back "when the rest of the gals at Minsky's were working on the third layer of skin [and covering] themselves with a dark blue spotlight, I covered myself with a Shubert pink and black lace undies . . ."
When an overzealous audience at the Edinburgh music festival began to applaud during a two-bar rest in Ariadne auf Naxos, terrible-tempered Conductor Sir Thomas Beecham whirled and shouted, "Shut up!" The audience continued applauding. "Shut up," he snarled, "you bunch of savages."
Back from Rome sporting a dark green Tyrolean hat with a tiny brown brush, Playright Tennessee Williams assured reporters that Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini are "very happy together." As for Rossellini's onetime good friend, Actress Anna (Open City) Magnani: "The sexiest woman I ever saw."
Ernest Hemingway's first novel in ten years, Across the River and into the Trees, got a panning from most critics, but Hemingway's friend, disciple and sometime drinking companion, Novelist John (A Rage to Live) O'Hara brushed all the detractors aside. Taking over the first page of the New York Times Book Review, O'Hara intoned of his literary hero: "The most important author living today, the outstanding author since the death of Shakespeare . . . the most important, the outstanding author out of the millions of writers who have lived since 1616." Concluded O'Hara, in a burst of Hemingway style: "He may not be able to go the full distance, but he can still hurt you. Always dangerous. Always in there with that right cocked. Real class."
New Directions
To his already bulging gallery of family portraits (he has eight children by his first wife), retired Major General Claire Chennault, 60, wartime boss of the Flying Tigers and the Fourteenth Air Force, added one more pose in Oakland, Calif. (see cut), after flying in from Hong Kong. He also offered Californians his opinion that the U.S. "very likely" will become involved in a war with Red China. Then the general installed six-month-old Cynthia Louise ("Butterball") with in-laws and herded second wife Anna and 19-month-old Claire Anna ("Sugar") onto a plane for Washington, where he had a little business with the State Department.
At 62, Al Jolson was still going places. First he was fined $19 for speeding and jumping a traffic light. A few days later, he announced that Defense Secretary Louis Johnson had given him the green light on his request to sing (at about $3 a day) for the boys in Korea.
Senator Glen Taylor, onetime running mate of Henry Wallace whose yodeling and guitar-plunking during last month's primaries failed to impress Idaho Democrats (he has demanded a recount), announced that he may go into the theatrical producing business.