People: Footloose

An emissary from the isle of Stromboli named Monroe E. McDonald landed in Manhattan to tell an anxious nation the true story about Cinemactress Ingrid Bergman and Italy’s gifted Director Roberto Rossellini. To Hearst’s Manhattan Gossipist Cholly Knickerbocker, Lawyer McDonald confided that Ingrid’s husband, Dr. Peter Lindstrom, was a strong, masterful man, to whom she had always given obedience and respect, but never true love. But when chubby, balding Director Rossellini came to Hollywood with a movie in mind, Ingrid was thrilled at the very idea of working for him. It was not until he met her at the plane in Rome that she “realized it was Roberto, the man, who had inspired her . . .” Now she did not intend to return to the U.S. until she could come back as Mrs. Rossellini. To Hearst’s Hollywood Gossipist Louella Parsons, McDonald confided that Ingrid was ready to give Husband Peter half their community property in exchange for a divorce, and to put the other half in a trust for Pia, their eleven-year-old daughter. “She has no hard feelings toward him,” McDonald reported. “She feels as a daughter would toward a father, but says she has never been in love in her life until she met Rossellini. . . Miss Bergman has done everything to avoid bitterness but she was deeply hurt when Dr. Lindstrom tried to send a psychiatrist to examine her. Naturally she refused to see a psychiatrist because it wasn’t Rossellini’s influence that caused her to fall in love, nor was she sick . . .”

Maestro Arturo Toscanini landed on the dock in Manhattan, hale and chipper after a four-month sojourn in Italy and what he announced would be his last boat trip. “I enjoyed the voyage,” admitted the 82-year-old perfectionist, but it took too long: from now on “I prefer air travel.”

Veteran Post-Impressionist Pablo Picasso, 67, paused in the glare of the sun for an earthy, realistic photograph while strolling near his villa at Vallauris, near Cannes, with his twentyish mistress, Francoise Gillot, and their two-year-old son, Claude.

Thrill-Murderer Nathan Leopold, 44, who has served 25 years of a 99-year sentence for the kidnap-killing of 14-year-old Bobby Franks back in 1924 (Partner Richard Loeb was stabbed to death by a fellow inmate in 1936), got a reward for his volunteer guinea-pig service in wartime malaria experiments: commutation of his term to 85 years (making him eligible to apply for a parole in January 1953).

Fancy Free

“The people get up too late and go to bed too late,” declared Historian Douglas Southall Freeman, who usually rolls out at 2:30 A.M. and hits the hay at 9 P.M. “The nation would be greater and its people more alert mentally and physically if they got out of bed by sunup every day . . . The difference between a career and a job is the difference between forty hours a week and sixty hours a week.”

“If I were a very young married woman starting life . . .” said Mrs. Winston Churchill to the graduating class of the National Institute of Houseworkers, “I think I should try to pass the examination myself. I should feel embarrassed working together [with you] if I was doing everything badly, or if I did not know how to iron a child’s frock.”

“All women dress alike all over the world,” declared Couturiére Elsa Schiaparelli, who ought to know. “They dress to be annoying to other women.”

llya Ehrenburg, journalistic hatchet-man for the U.S.S.R., gave the home folks a thumbnail sketch of what things are like in the U.S.: “Vulgarity and arrogance, robots and chewing gum, fornication in an automobile, a Negro soaked in gasoline, supermen who crush skulls, frame-up of Communists, hypocrisy and savagery . . . greed, falsehood and fear. [The American] has the dove of peace—the B-36. He waves the olive branch—the atom bomb.”

The Solid Flesh

Cinemactor Cary Grant, 45, had a small cyst removed.

Why was White House Aide Harry Vaughan, 55, missing from his usual place at the presidential press conference? He was at the dentist’s, explained the President. “In pain?” somebody asked, solicitously. Probably, said President Truman, and added: Can you be in a dentist’s chair and not be in pain?

Lowell Thomas, 57, veteran newscaster and globetrotter, on his way back to India through the Himalayas after a visit to the Dalai Lama in Tibet, was thrown from a horse. He banged up his hip, and suffered from what seemed to be a broken thigh. His son, Lowell Jr., prepared to his father out by sedan chair, in a that will take about 16 days.

The Brimming Cup

In his adopted home town, Sonoma, Calif., in the heart of the wine-growing country, Old Airman “Hap” Arnold, 63, graciously donned apron & keys as Honorary Cellarmaster of the Valley of the Moon vintage festival.

Old Soldier George C. Marshall, 68, stepped out of retirement to take a $12,000-a-year job as president of the American Red Cross.

Newlywed Jimmy Stewart got the kind of news young husbands dream of: an oil well in which he owns a 12% interest came a gusher at 800 barrels a day.

General Douglas MacArthur was named the first honorary president of the Boy Scouts of Japan.

Paulette Goddard, making a movie called Beloved in Mexico City, took in the bullfights, accepted the dedication of her seventh bull in four weeks, burbled: “The Mexican film craftsmen are among the finest I have ever known.”