MANNERS & MORALS: A Boy Who Likes Girls

MANNERS & MORALS

New York cafe society likes them bar-worthy and it likes them rich. Fat little 22-year-old Minot F. (“Mickey”) Jelke qualifies on both counts. Mickey loves nightclubs, he is listed in the Social Register, and his father, Oleomargarine Magnate John Faris Jelke. of Chicago, has millions stashed away; Mickey himself is due to inherit a fortune when he is 25.

Last week Mickey’s social career suffered a slight interruption. Detectives burst into his East Side apartment, found him with a pretty, blonde model named Sylvia Eder, hauled both of them off to jail, and charged Mickey with being a “common pimp.”

Assistant D.A. Anthony J. Liebler, who opened war last week on the big city’s more expensive call girls (fees: $50 to $500 a night), announced that the walls of Mickey’s apartment were lined with photographs of female nudes. Hundreds of other pornographic pictures were tucked carefully into folders. Investigators also found the inevitable “little black book” and two pistols, one in the apartment, one in Mickey’s blue Cadillac.

Mickey, according to Liebler, had been hard up for funds to operate on the nightclub circuit, since he got only $200 a month from a trust fund and what he could needle from his parents. Unwilling to wait until he came into his inheritance, he had been earning champagne money by procuring ladies of the night for moneyed sports who had only to visit his apartment and inspect his catalogues to make their choice.

When the news got to Chicago. Mickey’s father man-of-the-worlded the whole escapade. “Mickey,” he said, “just likes good-looking girls.” Sprung on $50,000 bail, Mickey took the same line. Miss Eder, he said, was his “steady girl.” “I’ve been going with her for six months. We are not engaged. She is above reproach.” As for the charges: just spite work by an 18-year-old girl who might consider that he had jilted her.

Two other millionaire playboys also made headlines last week. John Given Jr.. 44-year-old heir to a piece of the Heinz pickle fortune, was asked to leave Brigantine, N.J. because of an intoxicated trigger finger. Given, who was in trouble back in 1948 for threatening an old man with a sword cane, set off a disturbance last week by visiting a children’s party with five pistols, and firing blank cartridges in salvos while the kiddies fled, screaming, from every exit.

Meanwhile. 52-year-old Millionaire Auto Heir Horace Dodge Jr. tangled with a blonde showgirl named Gregg Sherwood. He charged her with swiping four cigarette lighters and some perfume from his house, and had the Detroit cops pick her up. Miss Sherwood announced, with icy hauteur, that he had given her the doodads as gifts, and that he could not only have them back, but give up all hopes of ever sharing her friendship again. The cops waved Showgirl Sherwood on her way. Dodge, who is still married to his fourth wife, said: “Some people take me for a sucker, but that is far from the truth.”