People, Feb. 5, 1940

Lickety-split from a blizzardy Georgia vacation went William Lyon Phelps to New Haven, to see a Yale production of Timon of Athens, which put him one step closer to his life-long ambition: to see all of Shakespeare’s plays before he dies. Of the Bard’s putative 37 dramas, Emeritus Professor Phelps, 75, has now seen all but Two Gentlemen of Verona, three-part Henry VI.

The Duchess of Windsor and the Duchess of Kent tied for first place in a Paris dressmakers’ poll naming the world’s ten “best-dressed” women. Deposed was Mme Anterior Patfno, now No. 3. Newcomers: Mrs. James H. R. Cromwell, No. 4 (see below), Queen Elizabeth, No. 10. Mrs. Harrison Williams, many times tops, dropped to No. 8. Others: Begum Ago Khan, No. 5; Mrs. Gilbert Miller, No. 6; Baroness Eugene de Rothschild, No. 7; Countess Barbara Haugwitz-Reventlow, No. 9.

One of the highest honors the Chinese Government may bestow on a foreigner came last week to Colonel Theodore Roosevelt Jr., national chairman of the United Council for Civilian Relief in China. Presentation: the Grand Cordon Bleu of the Order of Jade, at the hands of Ambassador Hu Shih in Manhattan.

A Piccadilly provost marshal remanded to Bow Street one Rev. Maurice Kenal Exham, 71, former Dorset vicar, for “wearing a military uniform calculated falsely to suggest that he was an Army captain.” Quick was the vicar to explain: 1) the family of his 12th-Century ancestor, Sir Richard Exham, had been granted the right to wear military uniform “in perpetuity” by Henry II for aid in the Irish troubles; 2) the right had never been abrogated.

The Very Reverend Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury, known as the,”red dean” because of his pro-Soviet sympathies, told a meeting of the Russia Today Society in London: “I regret the invasion of Finland and wish the Soviet Union had not done it.”

At his first press conference as U. S. Minister to Canada, earnest young James Henry Roberts Cromwell earnestly urged Ottawa interviewers to “forget all this richest-girl-in-the-world stuff,” to address him and his wife (Tobacco Heiress Doris Duke) as “just Mr. and Mrs. Cromwell” (see above}.

White-maned old Frank Lloyd Wright, dandy of modern architecture (Imperial Hotel, Tokyo; Johnson Wax Plant, Racine, Wis., etc.) told Los Angeles it was “a flagrant example of an opportunity that had no attention paid to it—the Great American commonplace.”

Governor Homer Adams Holt of West Virginia, faint kin to U. S. Senator Rush Holt, donned old lace and a veil, clutched a large bouquet in a Charleston Junior League revue called Dream of a Clown. Flower girls to His Excellency’s bride were former Governor Herman Guy Kump and Walter Eli Clark, Charleston publisher and onetime Governor of Alaska.

When retired General Abel Clement-Grandcourt of the French Army enlisted as a private after the outbreak of World War II, Le Journal cracked: “And Corporal Hitler has enlisted as Generalissimo.” Honorably discharged a month ago because of “feeble health,” irrepressible General Clement-Grandcourt, 66, turned up last week in Helsinki as a private in the Finnish Army.

Into Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art strolled a shy young woman wearing flat shoes, high woolen socks, a dark blue slouch hat with brim pulled down, a dark blue coat. Busily unpacking Italian art masterpieces from the Golden Gate International Exposition were museum employes. Because flustered Allen Porter of the museum staff recognized equally flustered Greta Garbo, the film star saw the pictures a day before critics did.

To Washington went 27-year-old Prince Bertil of Sweden at the head of a trade delegation seeking agreements to increase imports from the U. S. Asked what Sweden was going to do about the Russo-Finnish war, he said: “I am not a politician,” promptly proved that he was by adding: “I do not know how far Sweden will go in support of Finland, but we are . . . deeply interested in what is going on.”

Mrs. Neville Chamberlain evolved a sugarless, butterless “Downing Street cake.”

Handing out autographs to all who asked, kisses to whom acceptable, Actor John Barrymore arrived in Manhattan to open in My Dear Children, which played to packed houses in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland because of Barrymore’s ribald ad-libbing.

In Manhattan’s Ritz-Carlton, at the Beaux-Arts Diamond Ball, socialites paraded: Mrs. Adolph Spreckels in a $500,000 necklace, Mrs. S. Winston Childs Jr. in diamond-meshed stockings. Cinderella for the night was 20-year-old Theodora Caruso, 5-&-10¢-store clerk, escorted by Designer Ladislaus Czettel, who made her a costume for $7.28.

Feeling like a kid at the New Orleans Fair Grounds, Actor Jackie Coogan gave an affable bookie calling himself “Colonel Hunt” $500 to bet on the nose of a long shot, King Cotton. King Cotton won, paid off at $12.40 for $2 on the mutuel machines. Bookmakers do not operate at the New Orleans Fair Grounds.