Tallulah Bankhead, who regards Tom Dewey as "a phony ham actor," but thinks Harry Truman "a wonderful little man," did some hamming of her own at a Manhattan rally, in the famed, florid Bankhead manner (see cut).
Brought before the Circus Saints and Sinners as their 100th "fall guy," Socialist Presidential Candidate Norman Thomas took it from 1,200 guests, but he also dished it out. Handed a "diamond-studded" soapbox and a microphone (marked WIND), Thomas cracked: "I think I know why you gave me this—I'm the only man in America who can stand on a platform. In fact, I'm the only one with one to stand on." Introduced as "the man everyone loves and nobody votes for," the veteran of six campaigns admitted that he would "settle for more votes and less applause [but] while I'd rather be right than President, at any time I am ready to be both."
Still sniping at giveaway shows in his own field, pouch-eyed Radio Comic Fred Allen found time to fire a pot shot at a neighbor: "I haven't bothered much about television ... I think the men who used to take passport pictures are now the cameramen ... it seems to be nothing but radio fluoroscoped."
With typical Shavian logic, Bernard Shaw, 92, briefly considered in The New Statesman and Nation his physical and spiritual homes: "I have lived for twenty years in Ireland and for seventy-two in England; but the twenty came first, and in Britain I am still a foreigner and shall die one . . . There never was any such species as Anglo-Irish; and there never will be. It is hard to make Englishmen understand this, because America can change an Englishman into a Yankee before his boots are worn out" Of the "illusion" that "the Irish are The Chosen Race ... I can only say that it exists, and that I share it in spite of reason and commonsense."
To celebrate his 48th year as manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, baseball's spindly Connie Mack, 85, was presented with letters of congratulation from all 48 U.S. governors (neatly bound in a book). Sample tributes:
From New York's Thomas E. Dewey: "The name of Connie Mack stands for what is best in our national game . . ." From South Carolina's J. Strom Thurmond: "Yours is a record which has no equal..." From Alabama's James Folsom: "Your life has been an inspiration . . ." From Louisiana's Earl K. Long: "America is all the richer for people like you . . ."
Nursing the critical wounds induced by his talky Summer and Smoke ("I thought some of the criticisms were unnecessarily severe, but they were certainly honestly written"), Playwright Tennessee Williams admitted that he himself had suffered early doubts about his latest: "I had read it aloud to a friend whose opinion I respected and he had gone to sleep . . ."
Family Affairs
In Los Angeles, after 36 years of it, Natalie Kalmus, 56, sued Dr. Herbert Kalmus, 67, for divorce. Her accusations were in the richest Technicolor (the profitable business of which he is president and she color director). Samples: "adultery with various women in California, New York, and Massachusetts"; two threats to "beat out her brains" (once with a club, once with a cocktail shaker).