Athletes

Lieut. Tom Harmon, 1940’s top gridiron star, sole survivor of a plane crash in the jungles of French Guiana last April, bagged his first Zero in a raid on Hong Kong.

Tony Galento, the heavyweight who walks like a beer barrel, lost his appeal from a conviction and $10 fine for taking a punch at a cop last spring.

Henry Ford threw down the gauntlet to a gossip columnist. Merry-Go-Rounder Drew Pearson had broadcast that 80-year-old Ford is not up to his job. Cried the wiry octogenarian: “I can lick him in anything he suggests. I never felt better in my life. I don’t know how old or young this Pearson person is, or what shape he’s in or what he has ever done in the way of athletics. But I’ll meet him.” Forty-five-year-old Pearson suggested a race—”with any vehicle, foot, bicycle, or Model T Ford.” But after thinking it over a few days, the columnist backed down: “Henry Ford has certainly convinced me. . . . Despite his 80 years no one needs to worry. … My hat’s off to him. . . .”

Travelers

Secretary Frank Knox got left out in the rain in Manchester, N.H., by the great transportation squeeze, had to motor all night through a storm to meet a speaking date at Colgate University—no plane seats, no train seats.

Richards Watts Jr., back from OWIing in the British Isles, wrote another farewell piece as the New York Herald Tribune’s drama critic, prepared to join ex-Times Critic Brooks Atkinson in Chungking.

Helen Hayes’s improbable-looking French poodle, Turvey, dashed away from his mistress’s theater, mingled unnoticed with Broadway’s improbable-looking crowds. Next day, two blocks away, Turvey was found taking it easy in a telephone booth.

Lieut, (j.g.) Robert Taylor, lately of Hollywood, helped open a War Bond drive in Austin, Tex. He spoke to a stadiumful, was immediately followed by Senator Tom Connally, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who spoke to half a stadiumful.

Musicians

Arturo Toscanini helped Italian war prisoners improve their minds by sending to internment camps a good part of his private library, full of the favorite fuel of Axis bonfires.

Frank Sinatra bought himself back from Swingster Tommy Dorsey, who had owned a third of him for nearly a year. When the singer quit Dorsey’s band last October, he bought off his contract by signing over a third of his earnings-to-come for the next ten years. For full title to himself, the crooner last week paid more than $50,000.

Ethel Waters, grande dame of the blues singers, had her secretary arrested as a suspected burglar. More than $13,000 worth of jewels and $10,000 in cash were missing from a trunk. “I just tossed the money in … to store it, and then I forgot about it,” she explained.

David Rubinoff, veteran king of the shmaltz fiddlers, was sued for $50,000 by a Chicagoan who charged the sad-eyed violinist with alienating his late wife’s affections back in the late ’30s.

Babes

Betty Grable, seven-week bride of Trumpet-Tooter Harry James, announced she would retire for a while because she is going to have a baby next spring.

Ann Sheridan, playing a role that re quired her to sit on a glowing Hollywood moon, collapsed from the heat.