People: People, Oct. 7, 1946

Style & Beauty

Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney turned up at a chichi-choked benefit in Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel wearing a ready-to-wear number, and copped first prize (a bottle of champagne) as the best-dressed woman of the evening. “Shall I take it off?” cried Mrs. Whitney—and did. But what came off was just an outer skirt. It turned out that you could also wear it as a hood or a cape. Financier Whitney said he was proud of her.

Mayor James Michael Curley of Boston created a little stir of his own in the world of couture. Confided the Mayor to a visitor: on his back was a splendid tattoo of a schooner in full sail. The word spread like wildfire. The press clamored for a look. Then the Mayor, who is still under sentence for using the mails to defraud, became unapproachable. Boston wondered.

George VI suffered a nasty little dig from the underworld. Style-conscious burglars broke into a London tailor shop where a suit of the King’s hung, departed with four choices of their own, but the King’s was not among them. The snooted suit: a dark blue lounge model ($119).

Victor Moore lowered his bubble-shaped person into a lovely marble tub, assumed a moderately rapt expression, and, clutching his cigar, gave the world a change from the usual bubble-bath picture (see cut). The secret of his basketball-sized bubbles he kept to himself.

Slings & Arrows

Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House of Representatives, prepared to call it a summer and crawl back to Washington from his Texas ranch. It was better this year than last, when he broke an arm trying to catch one of his cows. Now the lucky statesman was suffering only from bee stings—four on one foot, from a bee in his boot.

Hazel Forbes, who rose from Ziegfeld glorification on Broadway to toothpowder riches (Dr. Lyon’s, inherited from her late second husband Paul Owen Richmond), lost her purse in a Hollywood nightclub. The purse’s contents: a diamond-studded gold cigaret lighter, a diamond-studded gold cigaret holder, a diamond-studded gold compact, a diamond-studded gold lipstick-&-perfume set, a diamond-studded pillbox, a solid gold scratch pad and pencil, a diamond-&-gold coin purse, a diamond-studded gold money clip, $500 in cash, and 40 solid gold keys. But no tooth powder.

Screen Love

Cinemactor Franchot Tone’s wife, Jean, publicly pondered a separation. Cozy quote from Jean, by great-hearted Gossipiste Louella Parsons: “It’s jealousy. Jealousy is a disease. . . . I can’t bear the thought of separating from Franchot, because I love him, but we can’t go on. . . .”

Sarah Churchill, green-eyed, ginger-haired actress-daughter of Winston and ex-wife of Comedian Vic Oliver, was having a complicated love life before cameras in Italy. Engaged for two pictures, one British, one Italian, she fell to work on both, shuttled back and forth between her roles: 1) an American composer’s wife, 2) a Sicilian baron’s wife, in love with another guy. “Two films at once,” cried haggard Sarah, running into a little syntaccident, “are almost too much as it is. Isn’t it?”

Travelers

Betty Smith, whose best-selling A Tree Grows in Brooklyn became a best-selling Hollywood movie, was off to the Alps to write a scenario for Swiss producer Lozar Wechsler. She had “no idea” what the story would be about, said she, but “I accepted Mr. Wechsler’s offer because I like the kind of pictures he makes. His actors are not silly like Hollywood’s . . . and there is none of this dreadful sex business in his movies.”

Charles E. (“Commando”) Kelly, famed Congressional Medal winner (40 dead Germans in a single engagement), decided to go into politicking, prepared to stump for the G.O.P. A converted Democrat (converted by the head of Pennsylvania’s Young Republicans, who said they were only paying his expenses), Hero Kelly ditched his Pittsburgh filling station, hopes to find a business with more leisure, and later on run for some public office.

Lord Beaverbrook, in the U.S. on another visit, paid his respects to New York’s Mayor William O’Dwyer before heading for a month’s rest in New Brunswick. Publisher Beaverbrook also paid familiar respects to newsmen who tried to interview him. His utterances: 1) “It was a personal visit to see the Mayor and talk about his beloved Ireland”; 2) “Goodbye.”

Lord Inverchapel, still aglow with the memory of his arrival as Ambassador last May, gave Manhattan banqueters an echo of his surprise at U.S. diplomatic conventions. “I presented a letter of credence to the President,” said he, “and of course I had to have the speech that goes with it. It was full of clichés and would have been a terrible thing to read, but then I discovered that I didn’t have to read it. All we did was shake hands. I presented my letter and the speech and then I found I didn’t even have to listen to the President’s reply. He gave me a copy of it and that was all there was to it.”

Judgment Day

Paul (“King of Jazz”) Whiteman had a new drummer: Paul Whiteman Jr., 21, who was making his professional debut in Manhattan. Papa’s judgment: “Hep, sharp and slick.”

Canada Lee, Negro pugilist-turned-actor, got into a wig and grease paint in Boston and made a little modern theatrical history by playing a white man’s role opposite Star Elisabeth Bergner in The Duchess of Malfi. Critics’ judgment: a success. In Wilmington, Del., history repeated itself: a theater manager disavowed racial prejudice but canceled The Duchess’ engagement.

Henry Agard Wallace, who talked himself out of the Cabinet, got a consolation prize. The speech that lost him his job won him the Annual Oratorical Award of the Linguaphone Institute.

Flesh & Blood

John L. Lewis was “doing fine” after an emergency appendectomy at a Washington hospital. Interested witness to the operation: Johns Hopkins’ Dr. John L. Lewis Jr.

General Mark Clark, suffering from ear trouble in Chicago, canceled a northwestern trip, hustled back to Washington, D.C., for treatment.

Ex-Ambassador William C. Bullitt, badly injured in a traffic accident in 1945, went into a Manhattan hospital for a checkup on his spine, possibly an operation.

Gustav V of Sweden, royalty’s liveliest octogenarian and survivor of countless tennis matches, motoring home from a hunting trip, drove smack into a water-filled ditch, climbed out scatheless.