Kith & Kin
In Hollywood, Mickey Mouse, whose birthdays are reckoned from the moment of his conception (in Walt Disney’s mind in a drawing room on a westbound train) rather than from his first public appearance (in Steamboat Willie, 1928), turned 21. Father Walt and a few oldtimers honored their hardworking star (who has appeared in more pictures than any other actor in Hollywood*) with a quiet, off-the-lot anniversary dinner.
In London, Princess Elizabeth caused something of a flurry by leaving Buckingham Palace (where she had reportedly settled down to await the birth of her baby next month) and showing up for the wedding of her secretary and her lady in waiting.
In East Hampton, L.I., the twelve-passenger, 40-ft. gondola, once a dazzling black and gold, in which Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning were poled around Venice in the 1850s, would be fixed up to glide again.† Willed to the village library by the. late Miss Alice Moran (her father picked it up in Venice in 1890 for $2,000), it had rested for a couple of decades under some tarpaper on the Moran lawn. The library didn’t know quite what to do with it. The Ladies Village Improvement Society, which sponsors an annual summer fair on the village green, had an idea. Next summer’s merry-go-round and hay rides will have strong competition: gondola rides on the village pond.
In Salem, Mass., some people named Hale, cousins of Author John P. Marquand, identified themselves as the characters in Wickford Point, the 1939 Marquand bestseller about upper-class decline & fall. The Hales are co-owners with Marquand of Curzon Mill, where the family has lived for generations, and which they say is the scene of the book. John has been trying to buy them out, and the money-poor, land-proud Hales took the case to court rather than move off their home place (“We want it because it has been a part of us for so long. And when you get old you want to go back to the beginning . . . The family . . . has always gone back there to die—and be buried on the hill”). “We still like John,” explained one of the Hales, with the chilly politeness of a Marquand character. “He has as much right there now as we have. He has relatives buried up on the hill.” But “we judge everything on the heart, John on the dollar.” And some things are simply not done, even in 1948: “He is using the proceeds of Wickford Point, indirectly perhaps, to put out us characters . . . to kick out his cousins.”
Slings & Arrows
Robert (See Here, Private Hargrove”) Walker, 29, Hollywood’s perennial clean-cut kid, got off with a $50 fine after being picked up as “drunk, noisy and boisterous.” He didn’t improve things any at the station house when he sassed the cops, and offered to take them on, five at a time.
Elliott Roosevelt was stuck with his fourth speeding fine in three years, his second in 1948: a $10 item for zipping along the Saw Mill River Parkway (New York) at 52 m.p.h.
Hollywood’s Jack L. Warner, who had been feeling poorly, dropped in to see his doctor for a checkup, felt better after having his gallstones out.
Mrs. Paul G. Hoffman, wife of the ECAdministrator, was feeling shaky after her car was smashed up in a three-car collision near Monroe, La. Next day a friend drove her on to Dallas, where she planned to take a plane or a train to Pasadena.
Helen Keller was feeling O.K., but Companion Polly Thompson was ill. After touring New Zealand, Australia and part of Japan, they canceled the rest of their trip (to China, Korea, Siam, India, Pakistan, Burma, and points Middle East), and booked passage home.
Curtis (“Buzzy”) Boettiger, who recovered from a mild attack of polio six weeks ago, and his boss, Henry Morgenthau, who are making a tour of Israel for the United Jewish Appeal, were all right (except for possible jangled nerves) after a few minutes under mortar fire in Negeb.
George Bernard Shaw got the kind of assignment he relishes: a special request for a quiverful of Shavian shafts. The Communist Daily Worker asked him to comment on the indictment of the twelve American Communist leaders (TIME, Aug. 2). G.B.S., who has claimed to be an atheist, an anti-Darwinian (see BOOKS), a “creative evolutionist” and a vegetarian, “refrained from comment” in 212 words. Sample: “The founder of Christianity was a Communist with eleven faithful apostles, chief of whom* struck a man and his wife dead for keeping back their money from a common pool instead of sharing it. But American legislators, ostensibly Christians, don’t read the Bible, much less Karl Marx. They would charge Saint Peter with sedition as well as murder if he were not beyond their reach.”
*And is probably the best-known star in the world. In various foreign countries, he is known as Comondogo Mickey, el Raton Miguelito, Miguel Pericote, Topolino, Michel Souris, Miki Kuchi, Mikki Maus, Musse Pigg, Mickey Maus, Mickey Hiireke, Kiki Mavz’a, Mikkel Mus, Mickely.
† The gondola’s literary value was largely catalytic: the poem In A Gondola deals with thoughts of love.
*Peter, who struck down the famed pair of liars, Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5: 1-10) after they “sold a possession, and kept back part of the price.”
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