Hosts
Herbert Clark Hoover, fishing tripper, and the Duke of Windsor, his luncheon host in the Duke's Bahaman bailiwick, forthrightly, erectly double-breasted the news camera (see cut).
Noel Coward, on a morale-building tour of South Africa, nettled Afrikaner Nationalist Politico Paul Sauer by his imperial arrival in Cape Town. Egg-bald Sauer took the teakwood floor of the House of Assembly to fume: "The Governor of our sister state [Southern Rhodesia's Sir Evelyn Baring] traveled in a small coupe compartment but the crooner (a crooner is someone who sings as if something were wrong with his throat) came in a special coach. Have we lost our balance to such an extent that we make heroes of film actors and music-hall luminaries at the state expense?" Twitted a Cape Towner: "Please, Mr. Sauer, don't be beastly to Mr. Coward." Twitted Coward, observing that in his wartime travels he had been rumored to be both an admiral incognito and a secret agent : "Fortunately for my self-respect, nobody's ever called me a politician."
Paulette Goddard, newly arrived in Free China, was won in a drawing of straws by U.S. Army Fourteenth Air Forces Lieuts. Duane C. McDonald and Francis M. Stefanak. They turned down bids as high as $100 for their privilege of flying her on visits to servicemen at Chinese bases.
Sailors & Soldiers
Navy Lieut. Alfred GwynneVanderbilt, 31-year-old turfman turned South Pacific PT-boat skipper, was photographed with his 29-year-old brother George (also a lieutenant) at an advanced base in New Guinea (see cut). Apparently greasemonkeys to a considerable chunk of naval equipment, the descendants of the fabulous, family-founding skipper of the Staten Island ferry betrayed their rank only by their officer-like mustaches.
Joseph Wright Alsop Jr., kin to both the Roosevelts, crack peacetime Washington correspondent (with Robert Kintner), was commissioned a first lieutenant in the Army Air Forces, appointed aide to Major General Claire L. Chennault. Since 1941 Alsop had successively: 1) been in the Naval Reserve; 2) resigned from it; 3) been captured as a State Department man by the Japanese; 4) been repatriated; 5) worked with Chennault as a Lend-Lease man.
Dwight David Eisenhower, quoted by Universal Press Service Correspondent Effie Alley, wrote to an old friend who writes to him from Kansas about her visits to his 82-year-old mother in Abilene: ". . . Next time you call on my Mother, tell her I am well and miss her all the time. I only wish that planes flew fast enough that I could spend one day with her and be back here the following day for work. I would go A.W.O.L. that long!"
Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Persia's handsome, 24-year-old Shah (his Queen is the beauteous Egyptian Princess Fawzia, sister of Egypt's King Farouk) was presented with a jeep by Major General Donald Hilary Connolly, U.S. Commander in the Persian Gulf area.
Jesse Stuart, Kentucky's hillbilly poet-novelist (Taps for Private Tussie), father of one, passed his pre-induction physical examination.
Alan Ladd, the cinema's percussion-captious tough guy, discharged by the Army as too brittle last fall, was called for a retake, rumored fit to be retaken.
Richard ("Red") Skelton, comedian classified 1-A after his wife divorced him last month, was also acceptable.