People: Hearts & Thistles

Jacob L (“Jakie”) Webb, 23 (great-great-grandson of the late Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt), who last year was married for seven weeks, ran off with Manhattan’s playful Lenore Lemmon, 18, to Moncks Corner, S.C. The bride, a refugee from Manhattan’s Stork Club—excommunicated for scene-raising—had a bottle opener for a wedding ring. Blonde Vivian Stokes, 18, who canceled her debut after Jakie announced he would wed her, got the news of the elopement while she waited for Jakie in a nightclub. Said the ex-fiancée impetuously: “Jakie can have his Lemmon. . . . I’m going to look for a job.” Said the bride: wandering Jakie (ex-sailor, ex-pilot, teller of tall tales, lover of tattoos) would also look for a job—in Hollywood. Said bride’s mother: “It’s good to know that Lenore will settle down.” Then the law tagged Jakie on two rubber-check charges. He skipped his date with the judge and forfeited $500 bail. Sally Rand said she was going to marry Thurkel Greenough, rodeo rider. His wife said that Sally would have to wait.

Silly Symphony

Air Corps cadets at Oxnard, Calif. voted Vera Zorina owner of “the most beautiful fuselage in the world.” Firestone Rubber workers in Akron elected Starlet Alexis Smith “the night shift sweetheart.” Gene Tierney prepared to dunk herself, for glamor’s sake, in $1,700 worth of essence of gardenias.

Oops Dept.

Leon Henderson ripped the seat out of his pants getting out of an automobile, stood with his back to the wall at a party. A nightclub comic threw a glass of ice water in Heckler Jack Oakie’s face. Mexico City police hunting a stolen car stopped a sedan, apologized to Carol of Rumania. They had the wrong number. Passenger Henry Morgenthau Jr.’s nose was buried in a book when his plane ripped through a treetop, mangled the landing gear. At Philadelphia it did a groundloop. Declared Morgenthau: “I had no fears.”

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt as an individual drawing card nosed out Comic Fibber McGee for first place in number of NBC outlets. Score: Eleanor, 128; Fibber, 127.

War & Defense

King George ordered 20 tons of Buckingham Palace’s railings and gates removed for conversion into armaments; promoted the Duke of Gloucester twice in one day, from air vice marshal to air marshal, from major general to lieutenant general. Belgium’s King Leopold III, blond when he became a virtual prisoner of the Nazis in his own palace at Laeken, has turned grey. Lieut. Joseph Alsop Jr., ex-Washington columnist, resigned from the Navy, to work for Generalissimo Chiang in Chungking. Sumner Welles’s son, Arnold, graduated from the Naval Reserve Officers’ training school in The Bronx. Civilian Defense Director Fiorello H. LaGuardia turned down a WPA “national defense project”: study of the home life of fish. Hedy Lamarr invented a remote-control device the Government termed secret and “promising.” The Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service set Private Mary Churchill to scrubbing steps after Father Winston asked “no favors.” Paris papers predicted that General Maurice Gustave Gamelin, ex-Premiers Léon Blum, Edouard Daladier, Paul Reynaud would be moved to a fortress prison for trial at war’s end. Marshal Pétain harvested his grapes at Villeneuve-Loubet on the Côte d’Azur. A Fight For Freedom audience of 17,000 cheered when Wendell L Willkie and William S. Knudsen denounced Naziism at Madison Square Garden, Eddie Cantor tripped over his hoopskirts, Swingstress Ella Logan swung Tipperary, Larry MacPhail bussed her, and Bill Robinson tap-danced in a gold-&-ermine suit on “Hitler’s coffin.” In Moscow, U.S. Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt sent over a plate of flapjacks and a can of maple syrup to Lord Beaverbrook. — Japan’s Crown Prince Akihito, Tsuguno-Miya, 7, paddled peacefully in the Pacific, produced the jolliest picture in a war’s age (see cut).

Dollars & Hollers

David O. Selznick paid $1,200,000 for a United Artists partnership with Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Alexander Korda, promised to make $20,000,000 worth of pictures, got a kiss from Mary. Ruth Etting’s husband, Myrl Alderman, dropped his $225,000 damage suit against her ex-husband, Martin Snyder, who shot him four years ago. Billy Rose sued the Canadian National Exhibition for $500,000 for calling its summer water show an “Aquacade.” Richard Krebs (“Jan Valtin”) was sued for $50,000 by a woman who said she spent more than a year typing and researching his Out of the Night, Pro Football Commissioner Elmer Layden fined Dodger Team Owner Dan Topping $100 for disparaging the professional league.