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An author more compulsive about his rights than most, Meyer (Compulsion) Levin, won a verdict for $50,000 damages in a Manhattan court on his contention that he was gypped of credit in the production of Broadway's Pulitzer Prizewinning hit, The Diary of Anne Frank. Not only was it his original idea to turn the young Nazi victim's journal into a play, claimed Levin, but he had already completed a stage adaptation when a switch of producers and writers left him out in the cold. On the losing end of Playwright Levin's suit: Producer Kermit Bloomgarden and Anne's father, Otto Frank, who controlled rights to the book.
Now knocking down about $33,000 a year, onetime Heavyweight Champion Joe Louis happily announced that the U.S. is giving him a break that may eventually lift his private millstone—the $1,250,000 in federal income tax arrears that Joe still owes from 1946-52 (which includes his last prodigal fighting years). Irresponsible as ever with his money, Joe still tosses around cash, keeps no records, no bank accounts, is behind on his taxes for every year since 1953. The reve-nooers have agreed to accept $20,000 a year from Joe as taxes on his current income* and on his recent (since 1953) arrears. Five years hence, if Louis has anted up annually as a solid citizen, the Government may offer him a merciful settlement on the prodigious arrears of his ring days.
When the Civil War was a year old, Kentucky's Warren County grand jury indicted three top soldiers of the Confederacy. Charges: treason and conspiracy. Chief specification: they had invaded border Kentucky and tried to bully her into the Confederate States. The defendants: Major General John C. Breckinridge, onetime (1857-61) Vice President of the U.S. (under President Buchanan) and later Confederate War Secretary; Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan, the famed cavalry raider who escaped from a Union prison in 1863, was killed next year by a Union soldier when cut off from his forces; Lieut. General Simon Bolivar Buckner, who survived the conflict to become governor of Kentucky.† When the war ended, Warren County's records were messed up and nobody could find the indictments. Last November, 95 years after the true bills were handed down, workmen moved an antique filing cabinet from the courthouse in Bowling Green, and the ancient papers popped up. With the indictments at last in hand, a local court last week bestirred itself to formally quash them.
Ever youthful (39 for the past quarter-century) Comedian Jack Benny announced with pained resignation that he will turn 40 on the eve of his 64th birthday next month.
* Annual salaries: $20,000 as a director of the International Boxing Club, $8,200 as a "good will ambassador" for Mercury Records, $4,800 for lending his name (as "public relations director") to Chicago's Joe Louis Milk Co.
† And to sire Lieut. General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., killed in 1945 on Okinawa.