(2 of 2)
Author John Steinbeck's estranged wife, Gwyn Conger Steinbeck, temporarily settled in Reno for a routine divorce, got mixed up in ugly complications. Her occasional dinner partner, Denverite Leonard J. Wolff, morose over his own divorce and out $86,000 on the night's gambling, brought her home one morning, 45 minutes later blew his brains out. Authorities cleared Gwyn of any connection with the suicide, declared that she was a victim of circumstances ("it could have happened to any girl").
Also in Reno, after 14 months of marriage, Doris ("Richest Blonde in the World") Duke got a quick divorce on grounds of mental cruelty from Porfirio Rubirosa, onetime Dominican Ambassador to Argentina. Puzzled newsmen wondered how she had been able to get the divorce so fast. It was really quite simple, explained Doris: she had never given up legal residence in the state after her first divorce (from Playboy-Diplomat Jimmy Cromwell), because she had never gotten around to selling the house she lived in. Had she made Rubirosa a cash settlement? No, they had agreed on that in advance: "He took his money and I took mine." What about a third marriage? Said Doris: "I hope I do not have another failure."
Quiet Zone
Jake Kramer and Dinny Pails, touring tennis pros, got off with minor bumps and scratches when their car skidded and rolled over twice near Gunnedah, New South Wales. They made it to their next scheduled exhibition match by taxi.
Bob Hope took a header running up a studio gangplank, was ordered to bed for a week with a blood clot in his left leg.
Jean-Paul Sartre, France's high priest of existentialism, who suffered a left uppercut by Pravda last year, got it on the other cheek: the Vatican put all his books on the Index (Librorum Prohibit orum).
Lionel Barrymore, 70, who has been trouping from a wheel chair since he broke his hip in a 1936 studio fall, might soon be back on his feet. He walked with the help of a handrail in his latest picture, now hobbles around the studio on crutches. After he sheds 20 pounds and gets fitted with a leather corset contraption, he will try walking without the crutches.