Names make news. Last week these names made this news:
Noting a man with soul-piercing eyes board the same plane with him in North Carolina, the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser's Editor Grover Hall Jr. invited his fellow passenger to share a seat. Hall's recollections of this chance encounter with Roman Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, 59, provided Advertiser readers with an unusual portrait: "As the plane revved up for the takeoff, the Bishop crossed himself . . . The editor observed the Bishop's supplication with satisfaction, considering that the plea for the safety of the ship's company was in uncommonly eloquent and influential hands . . . Airborne, Sheen deftly ripped off his collar and laid it upon his knee . . . We asked him how his tennis game was going . . . Sheen said, 'I have found that if I play tennis before going on the air, it lowers my voice at least two registers. I think that's because the exercise expands the lungs.' "
Cordiality established, Hall began plying the Bishop with questions about his general tastes. "Sheen said he gave the New York Times a five-minute scanning every day for foreign news, was repelled by politics and could never become interested in it ... Sheen has not seen a movie for eight years, cares little for drama, but relishes comedians like Milton Berle [who calls Sheen "Uncle Fultie"]. Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx are eminent in Sheen's hierarchy of devils. Sheen remarked that, 'I have read every single line that Karl Marx ever wrote. I took a year off to study him.' His discourse on Marx and Communism was so brilliant that the editor had the sense of looking into a machine gun firing tracer bullets."
Dashing Louis Arpels, a proprietor of the chic Manhattan jewelry house of Van Cleef & Arpels (branches: Paris, London, Newport, Cannes, etc.), is an international gadabout, but much of his fame has been reflected from his handsome wife, Helene, perennially in the headlines as one of the world's ten best-dressed women.
Last week Arpels basked in a notoriety all his own. Caparisoned in a trim salt-and-pepper sports suit and oodles of pearls, Helene paraded into a Manhattan court to tell a sordid tale of domestic dolor. Arpels had turned out to be a 24-carat gem dandy, complained Helene, who married him in 1933, but his diamonds were another girl's best friend. The other woman: "a mere nightclub singer named Juliana Larson." After acting distracted last year in France, testified Helene, Arpels announced to her that "he didn't have much time to live and wanted to spend it with Juliana." Shortly after that, Helene, idly rummaging through Arpels' pockets, discovered a shockingly tender letter written to "Lulu, my angel, my adored one." The letter was signed "J." Of Helene's testimony, Juliana snorted indignantly: "Just cheap, slanderous insinuations dreamed up by a former 'mere French mannequin.' " Meanwhile, Helene stuck to her demands: a separation decree and about $2,500-a-month permanent alimony—almost enough to keep a girl in clothes, though certainly not in diamonds.