ITALY: Mussolini’s Roach

“You don’t know but that I might have dinner with Mussolini when I go back to Italy. Maybe I can suggest to him that Hitler is not going quite right about things and maybe Mussolini will write Hitler a note and tell him so. . .I never made a move in Europe in this matter at any time without the advice and cooperation of some of the most prominent Jews there who told me I was doing the finest thing ever done in their estimation—tying up with Mussolini’s son and taking the boy back to Hollywood. . . .” Thus Editor Maurice Kann of Manhattan’s Motion Picture Daily recorded his version of what Hollywood’s Hal Roach excitedly called up by transcontinental telephone to say last week, after both Jewish and Gentile cinema folk had criticized Producer Roach’s partnership with Son Vittorio Mussolini (TIME, Oct. 4).

Son Bruno Mussolini was this week discovered to be in active bombing service with the Rightist airforce in Spain. II Duce once remarked: “Bruno is an idealist and I let him do what he wants. In fact, I approve of it.”