People, Nov. 14, 1938

Dr. Francis Everett Townsend, author of the $200-a-month pension plan for old folks which bears his name, announced that California’s latest craze—$30-every-Thursday (“Ham & Eggs”)—is “wholly impractical and absurd.”

Vinegary Westbrook Pegler, who has often made sour remarks about Italy in his syndicated column, was sneered at by an Italian paper, the Bologna Resto del Carlino: “It’s sufficient to reveal that Signor Pegler, defamer of Italians living in America, is a Jew and that the group for which he works, Scripps-Howard, is Jewish.”*

Before a mixed Los Angeles jury of nine middle-aged women and three grey-haired men, Fan & Bubble Dancer Sally Rand stood trial for assault & battery. She testified that candid camera shots taken of her in a Los Angeles theatre by Farmer Ray Stanford and his girl friend, Hazel Drain, had put her in a “ludicrous and lewd position.” She admitted objecting to the picture-taking, but denied that she had bitten Miss Drain or that she could have scratched Mr. Stanford (reason: her fingernails were pared to the quick to keep from breaking the bubble). Then she invited newshawks to a cocktail party to celebrate her acquittal. The jury, instructed by the judge, found her guilty. Miss Rand thereupon stood on her head in payment of a bet, gave a party just the same. Four days later the judge handed her a $100 fine.

Strapping German Cinema Tsarina Leni Riefenstahl arrived in Manhattan to launch her official film of the 1936 Olympics. To plaguy newshawks she vehemently denied that she was a Jewess, coyly contradicted rumors that she was Hitler’s “girl friend,” giggled: “I get film orders from Hitler. That is all.”

Oldtime Cinema Cynic Ned Sparks (real name: Edwin Sparkman) asked the Board of Tax Appeals to allow him income-tax deductions on $8,187 worth of “necessities,” because they enabled him to earn $172,000 as a cinemactor. Sample necessity: a $3,500 set of false teeth specially designed to take the hiss out of the letter “s.”

When the Queen Mary had been eased into her Manhattan berth last week with the help of ten tugs, her skipper, Commodore Robert Beaufin Irving, who few weeks ago docked her without any aid except good seamanship and a St. Christopher medal (TIME, Oct. 31), revealed that since his feat all department and novelty stores in Great Britain were fresh out of St. Christopher medals.

*Columnist Pegler is a Roman Catholic, Scripps-Howard Newspapers’ Publisher Roy Wilson Howard a Presbyterian.