People: The Chosen Few

After asking its readers to name the greatest living American,” the Saturday Review of Literature reported their choice-General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Members of the National Arts Foundation picked Dr. Albert Schweitzer as the man who has “the best solution to the world’s problems,” and Architect Frank Lloyd Wright as the contemporary American artist who would be “the most highly regarded” by the year 2000.

In New York, a blunt physical culturist submitted his candidates for the ten most beautiful women in America “if they would only lose ten pounds.” Among them-Cinemactress Jane Russell, “four inches too big through the pectoralis muscles, both major and minor”; Actress Denise (Pardon Our French) Parcel, “one of the sexiest figures ever to grace our shores, but she’s still ten pounds too sexy”; Tallulah Bankhead, “too much around the rectus abdominis region”; Anne (Kiss Me, Kate) Jeffreys, “a reduction in the gluteus muscles, both maximus and medius, is indicated.”

A list of the “ten best-dressed males of 1950,” selected by women fashion experts, included Henry Ford II (“the young look”), Cinemactor Robert Montgomery (“the handsome look”) and Henry J. Kaiser (“the executive look”). Included in the ladies’ best-dressed list for the first time: Gloria Swanson, Faye Emerson and Sloan Simpson O’Dwyer.

Gallup pollsters announced that velvet-voiced Dinah Shore is the nation’s favorite female singer.

After some cosmic concentration, a Manhattan astrologer emerged with “the ten most fascinating horoscopes in the world.” They included Joseph Stalin, whose emotional disturbances caused by the aspects to his Sun in Sagittarius and Moon in Pisces will cause him to overreach himself … His chart further indicates failing health starting in April” Come spring, Winston Churchill’s stars ‘will lead him along daring and awe-inspiring paths.” The Yankees’ Yogi Berra “. . . must be careful to avoid physical injury during February and August.”

The Old Gang

At his home in Washington, old General Peyton C. March, bearded Army Chief of Staff in World War I, celebrated a happy birthday with his family, but said no thanks to an offer of a full-dressed cake: “A thing with 86 candles on it would have burned up the house.”

In Cleveland, longtime Pension Planner Dr. Francis E. Townsend, 83, dug up a copy of his 1906 marriage license to prove his age and complete his application for a social security pension.

The record for continuous service* in Congress finally passed to the dean of the House of Representatives, Illinois’ white-haired Democrat Adolph (“Joe”) Sabath, 84. He had bettered the mark set by Vermont’s Senator Justin Morrill, who died in 1898 after serving 43 years 9 months 24 days.

William Dudley Pelley, onetime leader of the rabble-rousing Silver Shirts, now out on parole in Indiana after serving half of a 15-year federal sentence for sedition, had an old overhanging sentence commuted. He would not have to return to North Carolina to serve time for violating the state’s blue-sky laws.

“I’m always glad to talk to reporters, providing they want to talk about what I want to talk about,” said big-shot Gambler Frank Costello to newsmen in New Orleans. “I’ve never been in better health. I feel rugged.”

The Beautiful People

A father’s classic woe settled on Glenn McCarthy, Houston oil millionaire. Just before the wedding of his eldest daughter, Mary Margaret, 19, word leaked out that second daughter Glennalee, 17, had eloped early in December with her high-school sweetheart, George Pontikes, 19, son of an immigrant Greek cobbler. The situation was cooled not a degree by the newspapers’ reminder that McCarthy, once a poor boy himself, had eloped with a millionaire oilman’s daughter 20 years ago. It took the irate father of the bride a couple of days to simmer down, but by the time Glennalee showed up to be matron of honor at her sister’s wedding, photographers were able to catch gimlet-eyed father McCarthy and son-in-law in a cool handclasp.

When his honeymoon yacht Zaca ran into a Mediterranean gale, damaged a spar, swashbuckling Cinemactor Errol Flynn gave a seasick order: “Put ashore, any shore!” When his black yacht finally put down in the dreary Andalusian port of Almeria, with his bride, two poodles, a dachshund pup and a small canary, Flynn decided to fly back to Paris.

At her first press conference in London, Mrs. Walter S. Gifford, wife of the new U.S. Ambassador, charmed the ladies of the press with some frank and candid answers. Said she, when asked if she liked to sew: “Perhaps I shouldn’t admit this, but I always say it makes my back ache even to thread a needle.”

In Hollywood, a publicity man persuaded dancing Cinemactress Ann (On the Town) Miller to admit that she was looking for a husband, but would probably have to go back to her home state of Texas to find one: “Of course, it would help if I could find a Texan with a few oil wells. But I could even go for a cowboy. They’re good men, too.”

In the British weekly Time & Tide, Author Rebecca West reported a transatlantic phenomenon: “At the wilder parties given by the American intelligentsia, there is always a row about 2 o’clock in the morning. Up to 2½ years ago this used to start because some barbarian had questioned whether Scott Fitzgerald was greater than Balzac . . . Now it starts because somebody has doubted the innocence of that unhappy man Alger Hiss . . . The American equivalent of the people who read and write the weeklies in England would no more think of admitting to the belief that Hiss ought to have been convicted than they would have an aspidistra in the window.”

* But not the mark for longest service which was set by the late House Speaker, Joseph G ( ‘Uncle Joe”) Cannon, with a record of 46 years.