The first issue of TIME included a section that was called Imaginary Interviews, in which celebrities of the day, like Margot Asquith or Princess Yolanda of Italy, were made to provide clever explanations of why they were in the news that week. By 1926, this not entirely successful experiment had acquired the rubric People, but it was only in 1927 that the People section began reporting what real people really said and did. "Names make news, " the section announced, "and last week the following people made the following news. "Herewith a sampler from the 56 years since then:
1927: John Davison Rockefeller Sr. leaned forward from the back seat of his Lincoln limousine, which had been halted in Matawan, N.J., by Policeman Sproul, to answer the policeman's question. Certainly, replied Mr. Rockefeller, the officer might stand on his running board and his chauffeur ("Phillips") might overtake a speeder the officer desired to apprehend. Mr. Rockefeller sank back again into the cushions, peered out at a mile of landscape which slipped by in about one, minute, watched the officer hand their quarry a summons, handed the officer five new dimes.
1928: Sir James Matthew Barrie, author of Peter Pan and other whimsies, was thoroughly vexed at the noise above his apartment in Adelphi Terrace, London. At 3 a.m. he sent a note of protest to the disturbers. At 5 a.m. the noise and the party ceased. The party was given by two newlyweds, David Tennant (son of Viscountess Grey of Fallodon) and Mrs. Tennant (nee Hermione Baddeley, actress). They wore orange sleeping suits of silk; the guests, too, came in blazing pajamas; many brought bottles of hair restorers, ink, gasoline, Thames water. Champagne was not lacking. After the party, Mrs. Tennant said: "Bottle and pajama parties ought to be the vogue in weather like the present . . . I think London will take to the idea."
1929: Leopold Stokowski, proud conductor of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, last week turned upon his applauding audience and said: "This strange beating together of hands has no meaning. To me it is very disturbing. We try to make sounds like music, and then in between comes this strange sound that you make." Delighted, the audience clapped loudly.
1930: Aimee Semple McPherson, soul-saver, returned to the U.S. (via Paris) from a trip to the Holy Land, with Bibles, lamps, some Palestinian garments (to wear in the pulpit of her Angelus Temple Church of the Foursquare Gospel) and bright yellow hair (it was reddish when she left the U.S.). While she whirled away on a 200-mile week-end trip through the Catskills, U.S. Customs agents checked her luggage, levied $138 against her in duties and penalties for undeclared imports. Sister Aimee bemoaned: "I never dreamed . . ." etc. Asked if she would pay, she replied: "Oh yes, if the country needs money I'm always glad to chip in."
1931: Theodore Dreiser (An American Tragedy) went to bloody Harlan County, Ky., to investigate coal miners' woes. At Pineville rustic detectives said they saw Investigator Dreiser and one Marie Pergain, blonde secretary, go into Dreiser's room. The sleuths propped toothpicks against Investigator Dreiser's door. When they came back next morning, they said, the toothpicks were still in place. Investigator Dreiser, 60, and his friend were