People: Words, Words

Sinclair Lewis defined a “lady” as “a woman so incompetent as to have to take refuge in a secluded class like kings and idiots who have to be treated with special kindness because they can’t take it.”

Private John Edward Lawton, first inductee under the Selective Service Act, looked back over his year’s training, concluded: “Army life is all right . . . but I don’t think I’m exactly cut out for it. . . .”

William Henry (“Alfalfa Bill”) Murray turned 72, foreseeing inflation, advised city folk to get rid of their paper money, move to the country, can fruit and vegetables, and bury them in the ground to “have something to eat when the trouble comes.”

Senator Wilbert Lee O’Daniel of Texas appeared in San Antonio with a dead deer, announced to the press: “I was by myself when I shot this . . . and it wasn’t tied down for me as most deers are when Government officials go hunting.”

The Real Thing

Tommy Manville, Manhattan’s silver souvenir of the trivial ’20s, took another wife—his fifth. The bride was Bonita Francine Edwards, 22, a blonde showgirl whom 47-year-old Manville had met four days before. “Long engagements may be out of style,” said the groom to the press, “but we’re glad we waited till we were sure.” The bride said frankly: “I’m not in love with Tommy—I’m just infatuated. I hope to fall in love with him after a while.”

Distinctions of last week’s marriage: the bride, daughter of a Chicago lumberman, came from a well-to-do family; she was a comparative newcomer to Broadway; Manville had been on the wagon more than a year. “This is the real thing,” he said. “I mean to settle down.” Day after the wedding the silver-haired asbestos heir confided to reporters: “My heart went cloppity, clop-clop all night.”

Odd Jobs

Senator Guy Mark Gillette of Iowa stuffed 56 newspapers in a canvas bag, trotted from door to door in Washington covering the delivery route of his young son, Mark, in bed with a cold.

Ruth Elizabeth McCormick Miller, daughter of ex-Congresswoman Ruth Hanna McCormick Simms, and Husband Maxwell Miller bought three acres of Illinois cornfield and two refrigerator cars, planned to set the cars in the cornfields and move in by Christmas.

Mrs. Clarence Addison Dykstra, wife of the University of Wisconsin’s president, entered the university’s College of Agriculture to learn something about running a dairy farm she has just bought.

Casualties

Tallulah Bankhead went to the hospital with flu the night she opened in a new Clifford Odets show, Clash by Night, in Philadelphia. She was pronounced “much better” after a day in an oxygen tent.

John Barrymore was sick again—hospitalized in Hollywood with intestinal flu.

General Hugh S. Johnson took a room down the hall from General John Joseph Pershing in Washington’s Walter Reed General Hospital, “for a complete test of all vital functions to see how badly I have slipped.”

M’Toto rolled over on her pet cat, crushed it, when her cage was knocked 30 feet by a freight train during loading operations at West Palm Beach. The lady gorilla, mate of Gargantua, was unhurt.

Transcontinental Debut

Elizabeth Firestone, daughter of Akron’s rubber tycoon Harvey Jr., made her debut in Manhattan at 1941’s biggest, richest party. To the taffeta-prinked Ritz-Carlton ballroom swarmed guests from Akron, Cleveland, Detroit, to mingle in the dance-floor crush with Vanderbilts, Laments, Warburgs, Aldriches. Meyer Davis’ orchestra played a new number—Night, music by Elizabeth Firestone. Three sons of three famed friends in industrial history got together, gave the nation’s family album a good new picture—Elizabeth’s father, son of the rubber pioneer; Edsel Ford, son of Henry; Charles Edison, son of Thomas Alva.