People, Apr. 24, 1933

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

Mrs. Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt set out for a 7 a. m. canter through Washington’s Potomac Park to see the cherry and magnolia trees in bloom. With her rode Elinor Fatman Morgenthau, wife of the Federal Farm Board chairman, and President Roosevelt’s Secretary Marguerite Lehand. Mrs. Roosevelt’s horse slid on the muddy bridlepath, fell to its knees. Mrs. Roosevelt was thrown into a mud puddle. Muddied but unhurt, she remounted, rode on until 9 a. m.

Into the Vatican’s Pilgrims’ Hall a group of pilgrims from northern Italy filed devoutly and stood against the wall. When Pope Pius came in by another door, all knelt. As the Pope stood he spied a kneeling man who towered above the others. He asked the prelate at his side, ”Isn’t that Primo Camera?” It was. Said the Pope, who disapproves of prizefighting. “It seems God could not enrich him physically more abundantly.” When he raised his arm to bless the group, he gestured specially at Italy’s heavyweight champion.

Chicken thieves broke into Socialist Norman Thomas’ chicken houses in Huntington. L. I., and took 50 of the 100 hens which Mrs. Thomas raises to supply eggs for her Manhattan tearoom. Socialist Thomas, who favors equitable distribution of wealth, put a stout lock on the chicken house.

Last fortnight a schoolboy in Fond du Lac, Wis. wrote to Postmaster General James Aloysius Farley, who chews gum: “What part has gum played in your success?” Gumchewer Farley wrote back, “I don’t know whether gum played any part in my success, but it was not a retarding factor.” Last week the boy crowed back, “My assistant principal said chewing gum was a bad habit, that no gumchewer could succeed. I read your letter in the class, and it got a lot of applause.”

In 1931 Nebraska’s richest woman, Sarah Selleck Joslyn, opened her $3,000,000 pink marble Joslyn Memorial on an Omaha Hill. It is an art museum in memory of her late husband George who made his fortune from a remedy for venereal disease (“Big G”) and from the Western Newspaper Union (boilerplate insides for small newspapers). For her Memorial Room she wanted an oil portrait of her spouse. After several painters had refused to do a reconstruction painting from photographs, Chicago Painter Paul Trebilcock did the job. In January the portrait was hung in the Joslyn Memorial but Mrs. Joslyn was not satisfied. Last month the Museum’s Director Paul Henry Grumman cut out two tiny circles of white paper “and pasted them in George Joslyn’s eyes, giving them a piercing look that Mrs. Joslyn liked. Omaha newshawks spotted the “improvement” and the paper highlights were scraped off. Last week Omaha art-lovers saw that George Joslyn had a piercing look again, saw two tiny brush strokes of white paint in the eyes. Director Grumman would not say whether he or Artist Trebilcock had put them in.

Two years ago John (“Jake the Barber”) Factor was fighting extradition to England on charges of having gulled Britons of some $5,000,000 (TIME, June 8, 1931). Hearing that Chicago kidnappers had marked him, he paid Chicago Gang Leader Alphonse Capone to tell them, “Lay off Jake Factor—or else. . . .” Last week, with Capone in jail, four men jumped out of a car on a Chicago street and grabbed Factor’s anemic Son Jerome, 19, Northwestern University Junior. They wrote Factor, who is still at large, to get ready $50,000 in small bills or receive Jerome “in parts.” Said he: “I’ll pay any reasonable fee. . . .”

At Sing Sing Prison, the lilies on the chapel’s altar at Easter services had been grown by Convict Owen (“Owney”) Madden, famed Manhattan beer baron.

Sequels

To news of bygone weeks, herewith sequels from last week’s news:

¶ To the British courtmartial of Lieut. Norman Baillie-Stewart of the Seaforth Highlanders (TIME. April 3): cashiering (no “drumming out” ceremony) and a sentence of five years in a civil jail. Charged on ten counts with selling military secrets to German agents (“Marie Louise” and “Otto Waldemar Obst”), he was convicted on seven.

¶ To conviction of one Scottsboro (Ala.) Negro on the mortal charge of raping two white girls (TIME, April 17 et ante): indefinite postponement of the trial of the other six defendants; in Decatur, Ala. Grounds: alleged insults to Alabamans by Chief Defense Counsel Samuel S. Leibowitz, creating “sentiment that might not allow a fair trial.” Interviewed by a northern newshawk about the Alabama jurors. Leibowitz was quoted as saying, “If you ever saw those creatures; those bigots, whose mouths are slits in their faces, whose eyes pop out at you like frogs, whose chins drip tobacco juice, bewhiskered and filthy, you would not ask how they could do it.” At a mass meeting last week, Harlem Negroes hailed Leibowitz as “a new Moses.”