People: New Directions

Inside Sources

“I’m a kid who’s gone in a lot for illusion,” wrote leggy Literatease Gypsy Rose Lee in Variety, by way of explaining the secret of her success. Way back “when the rest of the gals at Minsky’s were working on the third layer of skin [and covering] themselves with a dark blue spotlight, I covered myself with a Shubert pink and black lace undies . . .”

When an overzealous audience at the Edinburgh music festival began to applaud during a two-bar rest in Ariadne auf Naxos, terrible-tempered Conductor Sir Thomas Beecham whirled and shouted, “Shut up!” The audience continued applauding. “Shut up,” he snarled, “you bunch of savages.”

Back from Rome sporting a dark green Tyrolean hat with a tiny brown brush, Playright Tennessee Williams assured reporters that Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini are “very happy together.” As for Rossellini’s onetime good friend, Actress Anna (Open City) Magnani: “The sexiest woman I ever saw.”

Ernest Hemingway’s first novel in ten years, Across the River and into the Trees, got a panning from most critics, but Hemingway’s friend, disciple and sometime drinking companion, Novelist John (A Rage to Live) O’Hara brushed all the detractors aside. Taking over the first page of the New York Times Book Review, O’Hara intoned of his literary hero: “The most important author living today, the outstanding author since the death of Shakespeare . . . the most important, the outstanding author out of the millions of writers who have lived since 1616.” Concluded O’Hara, in a burst of Hemingway style: “He may not be able to go the full distance, but he can still hurt you. Always dangerous. Always in there with that right cocked. Real class.”

New Directions

To his already bulging gallery of family portraits (he has eight children by his first wife), retired Major General Claire Chennault, 60, wartime boss of the Flying Tigers and the Fourteenth Air Force, added one more pose in Oakland, Calif. (see cut), after flying in from Hong Kong. He also offered Californians his opinion that the U.S. “very likely” will become involved in a war with Red China. Then the general installed six-month-old Cynthia Louise (“Butterball”) with in-laws and herded second wife Anna and 19-month-old Claire Anna (“Sugar”) onto a plane for Washington, where he had a little business with the State Department.

At 62, Al Jolson was still going places. First he was fined $19 for speeding and jumping a traffic light. A few days later, he announced that Defense Secretary Louis Johnson had given him the green light on his request to sing (at about $3 a day) for the boys in Korea.

Senator Glen Taylor, onetime running mate of Henry Wallace whose yodeling and guitar-plunking during last month’s primaries failed to impress Idaho Democrats (he has demanded a recount), announced that he may go into the theatrical producing business.

Teamed up to do the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire, in which he starred on Broadway and she in London, Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh were in Hollywood leading the strenuous life. While slouching through a drunk scene on the Warner lot, Brando stirred up an old shoulder injury, was laid up for three days. Meeting the press in the costume of Streetcar’s nymphomaniac heroine (a faded dressing gown and blonde wig), Vivien announced that she had “discovered square dancing . . . [which] seems to be the best possible way to get one’s exercise.”

The Lucky Ones

At Atlantic City, brown-haired, brown-eyed Miss Alabama, 20, a Mobile belle named Yolande Betbeze, was crowned Miss America of 1951. The winning measurements: bust 35; waist 24; hips 35½; weight 119; height 5 ft. 5½ in. Her prizes: a $5,000 scholarship (which she will use to take singing lessons), a $1,875 Nash convertible, and chances to earn $50,000 through personal appearances. Said Yolande: “I bet mother is thrilled.”

The $54,762 estate of British Socialist Harold Laski, who died at 56 last March, all went to his wife. But a token part of Laski’s library went to his old friend and onetime associate at Harvard, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.

Tallulah Bankhead, who charged that a Procter & Gamble shampoo, plugged on the radio as “Tallulah the Tube . . . Take me home and squeeze me,” had damaged her reputation about $1,000,000 worth, settled out of court for somewhat less. About $5,000, said a spokesman for the defendants, was a “warm” guess.

H. L. Mencken observed his 70th birthday by presenting a null collection of his manuscripts and literary accumulations to Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library, where, the satirist recalls in Happy Days, “I had a card before I was nine, and began an almost daily harrying of the virgins at the delivery desk.”

U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson informed officials at Middletown, Conn, that he was “very disappointed,” but he wouldn’t be able to get back to his old home town for the opening of the new state express highway, Acheson Drive.

Troubled Times

Nevada’s Senator Pat McCarran informed the Western Shoshone Tribal Council that because of the Government’s policy prohibiting the naming of federal landmarks for living persons, they might not name their lake after Sond-hoo-vi-a-Gund (Man-of-many-Songs), a renowned Shoshone chief better known to palefaces as Bing Crosby.

Ordered confiscated as “fascist literature” throughout the Soviet zone of Austria: Crusade in Europe, by Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The rumor that he had turned up at a Manhattan cocktail party in a gold lame dinner jacket was greeted with a huffy denial by Noel Coward: “I have always had a reputation for being a conservative dresser and for dressing in good taste.”

As he was being lifted into his blue Cadillac, Sweden’s lanky, 92-year-old King Gustaf V gave his head a bad bump, nonetheless went on to preside at a cabinet meeting at the Royal Palace.

First Lieut. William M. Kean, 22, son of the U.S.’s 25th Division commander, Major General William B. Kean, was wounded by a mine in Korea just a week after he received a field promotion for gallantry in action. Philippines President Elpidio Quirmo announced that he would send son Tomas into the Korean war as soon as he finished his training at Fort Benning, Ga. Curt Simmons, 21, ace southpaw for the Philadelphia Phillies, was formally inducted into the Army. William F. Rickenbacker, 22, Harvard ’49 and the second son of Captain Eddie Riclcenbacker, signed on as a flying cadet in the U.S. Air Force. Radio & TV’s Arthur Godfrey knocked off for a week to get back into his lieutenant commander’s uniform and report for duty at Pensacola’s Naval Air Station. Hero-turned-Cinemactor Audie Murphy announced that his movie career will be all over as soon as he finishes The Red Badge of Courage and gets back to his National Guard unit in Texas: “I’ll probably be in the Army three years, and after that it would be silly to try to start all over.”