National Affairs: Divorce No. 2

In the winter of 1932-33 newshawks covering the President-elect first noted the formal relations between his daughter Anna and her husband, big, bald-browed Curtis Bean Dall. At the inauguration, Son-in-Law Dall put in a polite appearance, later visited the White House for a birthday party. Then the wiseacres of the Press had a surprise: not Daughter Anna but 22-year-old Son Elliott turned up in Nevada asking a divorce. Last week the Press finally got the news it had long expected. Mrs. Dall with Sistie and Buzzie slipped quietly out of the White House where she had been living for the past year, journeyed to Chicago, boarded the Pacific Limited for Nevada. Popping out of her compartment, she told a pestiferous newshawk: “I guess I’m up against the same thing Elliott was when he was divorced and remarried. . . . It’s hard for anyone to say he or she is going to Reno to get a divorce. We may want a divorce but there are any number of things to consider. It’s easy to start out—but rather hard to carry through.” Mrs. Dall detrained at Truckee, Calif. Thence she, her children, a Negro maid, three watchful Secret Service men, and Lawyer Samuel Platt who served Elliott Roosevelt a year ago, drove away in motor cars at 60 m.p.h. to escape trailing newshawks. In half an hour she arrived at Lake Tahoe and entered the seven-room cottage, on the Nevada shore, which she had rented for her six-week residence in Nevada. Said Attorney Platt: “I will not say whether she will charge desertion or cruelty.”

Thus eight years after that June day when Dr. Endicott Peabody married Anna Roosevelt to Curtis Dall in the vine-covered Episcopal church at Hyde Park, the President’s favorite child set out to undo the marriage. Newshawks quickly noted the shrewd timing of her action: Her divorce, if she gets one, will be granted late next month while her father is away on his trip to Hawaii. Whether, like her brother Elliott, she will remarry shortly thereafter no one yet knew for sure.