People, Mar. 16, 1931

“Names make news.” Last week the following names made the following news:

Mrs. James John Walker, at Miami Beach, Fla. with her yacht the Mary M., said hopefully: “Jimmy will probably take his vacation on the west coast of Florida, but that all depends on how conditions in New York shape up.”

Mayor James John (“Jimmy”) Walker of New York City, hounded by the city’s Press for his do-nothing attitude toward civic corruption, accepted an invitation to rest for three weeks at the Palm Springs, Calif., home of Attorney Samuel Untermyer.

Dancer Betty Compton (Oh, Kay! and Fifty Million Frenchmen), pretty friend of New York’s Mayor Walker; was suddenly and secretly married to one Edward Duryea (“Eddie”) Dowling some weeks ago. Last week she returned from the Havana honeymoon estranged from her new husband. They had found each other “incompatible” after two days. She planned a trip to California.

Discussing the colored “host-coats” which Manhattan tailors currently recommend for evening wear by gentlemen who are receiving guests at home, Hearst-Colyumist Arthur Brisbane wrote: “They allow the eaters and drinkers at the party to pick out the man who is paying the bills and prevent mistaking him for the butler. The latter advantage is not important, because the butler may usually be recognized by his expression of concentrated intelligence, and is nearly always sober.” Mr. Brisbane then drew a line under this sally and began anew: “Herbert [Bayard] Swope had this ‘host-coat’ idea long ago, wearing an evening suit of beautiful claret-colored damask. Why, no one knew. In his house there can’t be any mistake about the host. And the butler had nothing to do with it, for Swope’s servants are black.”

Colyumist Franklin Pierce Adams (F. P. A.) of the New York Herald Tribune, good friend of Mr. Swope, retorted: “It is in his guests that Mr. Swope makes his mistakes.”

On three large sheets of parchment Dr. Albert Einstein had written a summary of his relativity theory to date. An anonymous donor bought it, valued at $25,000, presented it to Yale University. The presentation was formal, with Dr. Einstein present, at the Manhattan bookshop run by Mrs. Joan Whitney Payson, daughter of the late Sportsman-tycoon Payne Whitney, and Mrs. Josephine Dodge Kimball, daughter of Marshall J. Dodge. Dr. Einstein forthwith sailed on the Deutschland for Germany.

In Manhattan famed Stylist Gabrielle (“Coco”) Chanel, who is on her way from her Paris shops to Hollywood to design clothes for cinemactresses, received newsgatherers. She was attired in red sports clothes and wore a five-strand pearl necklace, ten bracelets. She said, among other things: “The perfume which many women use is not mysterious. Women are not flowers. Why should they want to smell like flowers? I like roses, and the smell of the rose is very beautiful, but I do not want a woman to smell like a rose.”

Columnist Frank Sullivan of the defunct New York World was still among those World employes not appearing in print elsewhere. A “public notice” appeared in the New York Herald Tribune as follows:

FRANK SULLIVAN. Where are you? Have looked in every paper. Can’t live without you in this family. Z 76 Herald Tribune.

Frank Sullivan wrote to the newspaper:

In reference to the inquiry of Z 76 . . . I beg to state that I don’t know, but am making every effort to find out. I was walking along minding my own business when something hit me from behind, practically ruining my best pair of serge pants. It is all very strange but probably for the best.

If I discover any determinations as to my present whereabouts I will be only too glad to share them with my unknown friend. Until then, hello, everybody.

Later it was announced that Colyumist Sullivan would join The New Yorker.

Theodore (“of the Ritz*) Titze, longtime maitre d’hôtel at Manhattan’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel, recently manager of Manhattan’s Hotel Madison, accepted the post of managing director of the new Castle Harbor Hotel (not yet completed) in Bermuda. Theodore Titze relished this opportunity to escape the dietetic rigors of Prohibition, crying: “Everyone in New York . . . drinks spirits with their meals and that, of course, is just barbarous! The average person no longer knows the difference between sherry and Madeira, let alone claret and Burgundy! . . . [For the Bermuda hotel] I am going to France myself this summer to select the wine-list. I wouldn’t trust that to anyone else! Every single number I shall try for myself, from cognac of the comet year to the Cliquot’s yellow-label, ’21. . . . And I shall recruit the most skillful wine stewards in France. They shall be real ‘black aprons’ whose trade is their religion. It will be wonderful to have a really civilized restaurant once more!”

Two streetcars collided in a San Francisco tunnel last November and several people were pinned in the wreckage. One of them was Boy Scout Thomas (“Tommy”) Watson, 13, brother of Mrs. Herbert Hoover Jr. Scout Watson refused to be extricated before a more severely injured motorman, who died soon afterward. When Scout Watson was freed, his left foot was so badly crushed it had to be amputated (TIME, Nov. 24). Last week the city, which owned both streetcars, decreed Scout Watson should get $21,500 for his foot.

* Not to be confused with his successor, Theodor (“of the Ritz”) Szarvas, now resident manager of Manhattan’s Ritz Tower.