People, Apr. 18, 1938

“Names make news.” Last week these names made this news:

Since he parted company with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1935, sleek, downy Ramon Novarro, 39-year-old cinemactor who once threatened to become an opera singer, has appeared in only one minor picture. Last week he let it be known he had forsworn the cinema to study Hindu philosophy, had become converted to Yoga, was now anxious only to attain a state of complete mental & physical tranquillity. Said Yogiman Novarro; “I learned the breathing exercises of Yogi, and I thought deeply of the philosophies involved.”

Unemployed and claiming to be broke, Peter F. Reed, onetime vaudevillian, marched into a Los Angeles court, filed suit against his daughter, Marjorie Yvonne (Cinemactress Martha Raye), asked for $50 of her $2,500 a week salary. Maintaining that when his wife divorced him last year she promised that she or her daughter would foot his living expenses, Father Reed complained she had done no such thing. Said Cinemactress Raye: “All I’ll say is that my heart isas big as my mouth:”

On the same day this week Henry Ford, 74, and Clara Bryant Ford celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and Mrs. Ford’s 71st birthday by dining informally at Son Edsel’s with old friends & neighbors. Next day Dearborn luncheon clubs presented Motorman Ford with a book containing 4,000 admiring letters. The clubs also announced they had drawn up a 500,000-signature, mile-and-a-half-long petition to Franklin Roosevelt, asking him to call off Labor’s attacks on Ford. The petition will be carted to Washington in a trailer.

Elected a member of the St. Louis Advertising Club was Robert Wadlow, 20, most famed U. S. giant (8 ft. 7 in.).

When Sir Abe Bailey, rich & witty South African gold miner, had one of his legs amputated last summer, Capetown thought he was dead, dropped its flags to half mast.* Last week, suffering from phlebitis (vein inflammation), the doughty 73-year-old lost his other leg, two days later issued a personal bulletin declaring his operation successful, his condition satisfactory.

Eighty-year-old Colonel Andrew Summers Rowan, who 40 years ago carried William McKinley’s famed “Message to Garcia,” fell in his San Francisco home, fractured a rib.

* Said Sir Abe when he heard of the false report: “They won’t be able to pull my leg any more.”