People: Aphorists

George Bernard Shaw applied an old attitude to a new subject, as usual appeared to have a new angle. “The atom bomb has made war unprofitable,” said he, “so it’s already outmoded. Who wants to use an atom bomb?”

Hannen Swaffer, peninsula-nosed old bonebag who rattled out such fee-faw-fum dramatic criticism that London’s Laborite Daily Herald turned him loose on the Tories, arrived in Manhattan with his hair in its usual bun, his tongue as tart as ever. Two new Swafferisms: 1) on Winston Churchill—”[His] opposition . . . has been childishly futile”; 2) on Britain’s No. 1 Cinemagnate J. Arthur Rank, who attends to Methodism no less than moneybags—”I don’t think there is any Methodism in his madness.”

Alice Stone Blackwell, 88, Lucy Stone’s suffragette daughter, dashed off an unsolicited testimonial to the power of the press. Her letter to the New York Times’. “In very cold weather ordinary bedclothes are not enough. By spreading newspapers between the blankets one can keep warm on the coldest nights.”

Eyefuls

Eleanor Roosevelt, who has been called about everything else, was called by Artists’ Agent Leora Thompson one of the few women whose legs “fully reveal their soul.” Said Gamologist Thompson: Eleanor’s legs reveal “traveling dynamism”; Stripteuse Margie Hart’s—”suppressed dignity”; pallid Cinemactress Gene Tierney’s — “exotic desires”; Dancer Vera Zorina’s—”dynamic magnetism”; Columnist Elsa Maxwell’s fatted calves—”outraged complacency.”

Mrs. Winston Churchill and daughter Sarah got an eyeful of styles at a Miami Beach fashion show, and gave a reporter a small earful about Churchill style ideas. Mrs. Churchill likes simplicity generally, but plenty of color in the tropics, and long evening gowns—and she likes “hair that looks like-hair.” Said daughter Sarah of father Winston’s tastes in women’s wear: “Oh, he takes violent likes and dislikes to things.” Mrs. Churchill—in a blue-&-white dress, her white hair bound in a brightly flowered kerchief—elaborated authoritatively: “He really prefers just plain black or white.”

Mrs. Anthony Eden, handsome, little-publicized wife of Britain’s handsome, much-publicized ex-Foreign Secretary, arrived in New York from clothes-short England. One of her immediate objectives was the purchase of nylons. She was finally getting the postwar trip her husband used to promise “during those days when he was having them all.” She was scarcely off the boat before she had a new pair of shoes (black suede, high-heeled) and a pink sport dress. Her ultimate objective: Barbados, B.W.I., for “sunshine and rest.”

Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Trovers Harris (ret.), former head of the R.A.F. Bomber Command, arrived in Manhattan, with fetchingly beautiful Lady Harris and small daughter, to visit friends (“fast, furiously, and well”), get one more decoration in Washington, and then move on to retirement in South Africa. Frayed tweed topcoat, mangled green felt hat, shocking-pink mustache.

Bing Crosby was neck-&-neck with Frank Sinatra. Week after a truck full of The Voice’s recordings was attacked by hijackers in The Bronx (TIME, Feb. 25), thieves in Brooklyn swiped a truckload of The Toupee’s platters.

José Iturbi, warm-blooded conductor-pianist, shaved & bathed in cold water for a few days, then took action against his Los Angeles plumber, who had his hot-water heater. The plumber, charged Iturbi, hadn’t carried out a repair job as promised, but demanded $50 before he would return the heater. The chattering maestro sued for $3,000 damages.

Ernst (“Putzi”) Hanfstdngl, onetime court pianist to Adolf Hitler, was about to be returned to Germany, much against his wishes. In British and American hands through most of the war—and often rumored to be helping the Allies against the Fatherland—he was now in England, had no taste for facing “German underground fanatics” back home.

Wilhelm Furtwängler, unofficially banned last fall (as a “tool” of the Nazis) from resuming as conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, was permanently banned by U.S. military government authorities. Brigadier General Robert A. McClure decided that the famed conductor’s early anti-Naziism had weakened. As he had last December, Jewish Violinist Yehudi Menuhin bravely stuck his neck out for his fellow artist, cabled the General: “I beg to take violent issue. . . . The man was never a Party member … I believe it is patently unjust. . . .”

Past Masters

A. A. Milne reported that little-gold-head Christopher Robin, his son and the subject of his verses (When We Were Very Young), hopes soon to go hoppity-hoppity-hop out of the British Army and into Cambridge.

Dixon Merritt, skinny, big-beaked Tennessee newsman who in 1909 hatched the famed but limping pelican limerick,* couldn’t stop friends from improving the occasion of his retirement as REA press-agent with the revelation of his own (fit-to-print but still limping) favorite:

In the land of the African Rhino There lives a pure white albino. His parents are blacker than Navy tobaccer; How he can be white I’m damnfino.

The Weatherman (St. Louis incarnation) confirmed a lot of people’s suspi:ions about him, just as he prepared to go into retirement after 26 years of vexing the public. Chuckled 70-year-old Prognosticator Henry C. Gross: “I often hear people on streetcars cussing me out. I always raise my newspaper in front of my face and laugh about it.”

Fortune Hunters

Ex-Premier Léon Blum, who rooms in Marie de Medici’s Palace of the Luxemburg and pays rent in proportion to the amount of furniture he uses, attended to a personal matter before he departed for the U.S. to ask a $2,500,000,000 loan. He asked the French Government, please, to take away some of the furniture.

The Earl of ‘Halifax, retiring British Ambassador, faltered momentarily as he talked with Omaha newspaper reporters about the proposed $3,750,000,000 U.S. loan to Britain, but recovered with diplomathematical aplomb: “I’ve always been bad on sums. . . . Let’s see, what did I say, millions or billions?”

George Washington, kidnapped, and hung (in effigy) since 1780 by the Earls of Albemarle, was finally ransomed for $22,800. The effigy, a portrait by Charles Wilson Peale, was pirated while en route to Louis XVI of France. Said Buyer George Davey (for Manhattan’s Knoedler Galleries): “One of Peale’s best . . . nice if it were to wind up in the White House.”

-Authoritative version:

A wonderful bird is the pelican; His bill holds more than his belican. He can take in his beak Food enough for a week, But I’m darned if I know how the helican.