People, May 16, 1938

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

Fifty-eight-year-old Polar Explorer Linncoln Ellsworth announced he would leave Manhattan August 13 for his fourth expedition to Antarctica.

King Sisowath Monivong, 59-year-old ruler of the ancient protectorate of Cambodia in French Indo-China, dismissed approximately 100 of his 200 wives. Reason: economy. The dismissed ladies will keep themselves occupied with classical dancing, for which they are famed.

Few days after a stormy Atlantic crossing, German Opera Star Lotte Lehmann trotted out on the stage of London’s Covent Garden * to sing the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier. In the middle of the first act and a high note she stopped singing. Shouting in English “I can’t go on,” she rushed from the stage, fell in a dead faint. From a stage box stepped the Viennese soprano, Hilde Konetzni, due to make her London debut the next night. Dressmakers hastily pinned up Diva Lehmann’s costumes to fit Hilde Konetzni’s shorter, plumper figure. Whereupon Pinch-Hitter Konetzni carried on where Diva Lehmann left off, was roundly cheered at the opera’s close. One man asked for his money back.

In Washington, Speaker of the House William Brockman Bankhead banged his foot on a bedpost, broke his toe, took to crutches.

Mrs. Joseph Patrick Kennedy, wife of the U. S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James, gave London newsmen the list of seven U. S. women she planned to present at court this week. Britishers were not surprised that, true to the Ambassador’s promise, the roster included no debutantes—only wives and daughters of U. S. officials stationed in Great Britain, plus two of the five Kennedy daughters, Kathleen and Rosemary. Surprised they were, however, that Mrs. Kennedy gave out the names at all. Heretofore official lists have always been kept dark until printed in the court calendar day before the show.

Author-Critic Henry Louis Mencken quit his short-time job as editor of the Baltimore Evening Sun (TIME, Feb. 21), went to Manhattan, where he attended a cocktail party given by Lecturer Sally Rand (see p. 56), got ready to sail for a vacation in Nazi Germany.

Speaking at a London literary luncheon, Very Rev. William Ralph Inge, longtime (1911-34) “Gloomy Dean” of St. Paul’s Cathedral, made some prophecies about dictionaries of the future. Under “negus,” said he, one might soon expect to find “1. A drink composed of wine, water and sugar. 2. See Victor Emmanuel. In the same way, in the next edition, you may see: Democracy—obsolete form of government still practiced in North America. See dictator.” In New Haven, Conn., Yale Freshman William Eldred Jackson, only son of U. S. Solicitor General Robert Houghwout Jackson, was arrested for pulling down flags and decorations put up for the city’s tercentenary celebration.

In Birmingham, Ala., James Cannon pugnacious, 73-year-old Prohibitionist, politician, and Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, announced that he was retiring from his ecclesiastical duties. Explanation: “I dedicate the rest of my powers to the fight against the liquor traffic.”

Keeping up on the romance of Leopold Stokowski and Greta Garbo, Hollywood’s fat Columnist Louella Parsons wrote that she had seen a letter from Cinemactress Garbo to an unidentified friend, stating that she and Conductor Stokowski were married in a tiny Italian village six weeks ago. Meanwhile, the taffy-haired pair journeyed to Haarby, Sweden, to visit Garbo’s mother, continued to deny reports of their marriage.

Fan & Bubble Dancer Sally Rand flew to Cambridge to address a Harvard freshmen smoker. At the door students gave her a gay greeting. “Thank you,” said Miss Rand, “for recognizing me with my clothes on.” Subject of her speech was “How to Be Intelligent Though Educated.” Speaker Rand urged her audience to quit “acting like a bunch of ten-year-olds.” “Where’s your bubble?” cried the freshmen. She advised them to face “brave new frontiers.” “What’s your ‘phone number?” cried the freshmen. “Possibly,” said Miss Rand, “you could save this country’s democracy by doing something in labor and politics.” “Where’s your fan?” cried the freshmen. When it was all over, Miss Rand admitted that “it was a very novel experience.” Before he left Washington for his Jersey City speech which he never made, Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Representative John Toussaint Bernard asked Secretary of State Cordell Hull for a passport to enter “the totalitarian domain of Dictator Frank Hague in Jersey City.” He didn’t get it.

To publicize its parody of Vogue Magazine, the Harvard Lampoon sponsored a burlesque fashion show, invited perennial Party Hostess Elsa Maxwell to Cambridge to direct it, without pay. While Harvardmen in women’s frocks strutted about the stage, pranksters surrounded the grotesque Lampoon Building on Mt. Auburn Street, sprayed lye on the windows, tried to break in, tussled with Harvard Yard police. Delighted, Directress Maxwell asked what was going on. Explanation: Members of the Harvard Crimson, more serious student publication, were jealous of the Lampoon’s coup, had tried to kidnap buxom Elsa Maxwell. Failing that, they determined to disrupt the party. Cried Miss Maxwell, dismayed that the kidnap plot had failed: “The reign of terror in Vienna was kindergarten stuff beside the reign of terror in Cambridge.”

Into the outdoor exhibit of Manhattan’s Sculptors’ Guild (TIME, April 25) toddled Manhattan’s versatile Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia. Dismissing himself as an art critic (“When it comes to art, I’m just a Liberty Leaguer”), Critic LaGuardia spied an abstract study of a rooster. “If that’s a bird,” cracked he, “I’m Hitler.” Few days later, during a concert played by Manhattan’s Civic Orchestra over WNYC, he made his first radio speech as a music critic. Most salient observation: “If we are to have rigid rules for conducting every piece of music, then we might as well have a metronome up here conducting.”

* For further news of the London Opera season, see p. 50.