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But last week, on his gist birthday, his beard bristled as of old. "Get out! Go!" he railed at a London Evening Standard newsman who had distantly referred to his birthday. "The man who even utters the word 'birthday' . . . is no friend of mine. . . . Good afternoon. Don't come again."
His health was better than last year (though his legs gave him some trouble), and his mind still seemed as cold a lancet as ever probed an infection. He wrote recently: "Parliament men . . . keep declaring that the British parliamentary system is one of the greatest blessings British political genius has given the world; and the world has taken it at its self-valuation . . . always with the same result: political students . . . exposing such frightful social evils . . . Parliament ignoring them as long as possible. . . ." Of Marx's Das Kapital: "Little Dorrit is a more seditious book . . . All over Europe men and women are in prison for pamphlets and speeches which are to Little Dorrit as red pepper to dynamite." Said Shaw's literary executor, Dr. F. E. Loewenstein, in birthday tribute: "We have not yet heard the last of Shaw. He might still be hanged as a rebel or canonized as a saint. . . ."
Monty Woolley, who has played The Man Who Came to Dinner on stage, on screen & off for the last eight years, finally had to put in for stomach repairs. In Albany, he had a "successful" operation, was soon feeling well enough to go right back into character. When an interne accidentally entered his room, Woolley glared and blared: "Have we been introduced?" Interne: "No." Woolley (beard bristling): "Then get out!"
The Political Animal
Andrei Gromyko explained the party line on Victor Kravchenko, the ex-Communist who wrote I Chose Freedom and has now chosen to testify on Russian espionage before a House committee (see PRESS). Said Gromyko: "When a dog has nothing to do, it licks its underbelly. Sometimes this attracts spectators."
John Nance Garner made some amends to history. After announcing last month that he had built a bonfire of his political records, "Cactus Jack" relented and gave the University of Texas 34 scrapbooks he had preserved. Thirty contained old newspaper clips, but four were a treasure house of place cards, menus, invitations to luncheons, plus a daily social squib in Mrs. Garner's own hand.
Secretary of State George C. Marshall had a slight diplomatic exchange in Frederick, Md. He got lost while driving to a friend's house there; after cruising for almost an hour was set straight by a passerby, who observed: "You have a big job on your hands, General." Replied Marshall: "If I don't do any better than I did driving ... I won't do so well."
Over Their Shoulders
And who was to blame for Italy's being in history's junk yard? Italy's witty ex-Premier Francesco Nitti named a couple of safe scapegoats: Christopher Columbus and Niccolo Machiavelli. Machiavelli, Nitti explained, had "made us Italians out as men who are always ready to lie," Columbus was an even bigger culprit: his "indiscretion," Nitti claimed, had "shifted the axis of the world to the West," and Italy had been off the beam ever since.