(2 of 2)
Mary Astor, 39, cinemactress whose purple diary, involving Playwright George Kaufman (George Washington Slept Here) made top tabloid news in 1936, announced that this winter Chicago Broker Thomas G. Wheelock would become her fourth husband.
Fiorello H. LaGuardia, Manhattan's big-mouthed Mayor, got a glimpse of an all-but-spitting-image grandnephew, Richard Denes, when Correspondent Kathryn Cravens returned from Germany with a photograph (see cut). She found Richard and the Mayor's sister, Gemma LaGuardia Gluck, in Berlin.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower learned that he would receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Oxford next month. (So would General Mark Clark, Ambassador John Winant, Harry Hopkins, British Field Marshals Montgomery and Brooke, Air Chief Marshal Tedder.)
Kay Kyser, 40, drawling, corny Professor of Musical Knowledge, just back from a tour of the South Pacific, told the press he was through with radio. Said he: "I'm just so doggone tired. All I want to do is go back to Rocky Mount, N.C., and sit around with my 83-year-old mother and spit and whittle." His sponsor, American Tobacco Co., tartly reminded him that his radio show still has 26 months to run, hinted at a suit for breach of contract if he tried to quit. The Professor decided not to.
Leo Tolstoy, the Soviets decided, should be commemorated with a museum —the stationmaster's dwelling at Astapovo, where the great novelist died 35 years ago. After a last bitter quarrel with his wife, Tolstoy had stormed from his Yasnaya Polyana home, entrained for Moscow to begin life anew at 82; on the train he was seized with chills and fever, got off at Astapovo, succumbed to pneumonia a week later.
Imogene Stevens, 24, sloe-eyed Texan who last June jolted staid New Canaan, Conn, by bumping off Seaman Al Kovacs, 19, in an "aura of sex recrimination, beer and window-smashing reprisals" (so said Coroner Theodore E. Steiber), returned from a summer of Army camping with her husband, Major George R. Stevens III. Rumor said that she might seek a change of venue for her impending manslaughter trial because of public prejudice.
Men In Motion
Fritz Kuhn, porky, peccant (embezzling) ex-Bund leader, ex-U.S. citizen, got a free freighter trip to Germany along with some 500 other deported compatriots.
Admiral William F. ("Bull") Halsey, having formally reneged on his vow to ride Hirohito's white horse, made the mistake of meeting up with his old cavalry man friend, Major General William Chase, in a Tokyo suburb. The General proffered the Admiral a hoary steed and insisted that he trot his stuff. Taking the bit in his teeth, the Admiral ventured a slow, seagoing jog, dismounted quickly, gasped: "Don't leave me alone with this animal. I was never so scared in my life."
E. Phillips Oppenheim, 79, who has written 150-odd thrillers about international espionage, murder, grand dukes and grand larceny, returned to his prewar Guernsey (Channel Islands) home. On the Oppenheim stove: a sizzler with World War II trimmings.
*Observed the 17th Century's apothegmatic Sir Francis Bacon: "Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses."