People: That Old Feeling

Thrice-married Count Alfred de Marigny, 39, acquitted in 1943 of the sensational Bahamas murder of his father-in-law, Sir Harry Oakes, announced a new business venture in Hollywood. The count, whose wife, Nancy Oakes, got an annulment of their marriage last October, said that he plans to be a branch manager of a matrimonial agency.

The girls that longtime Cinematinee Idol Clark Gable has been dating recently received the news of his elopement with Lady Stanley in a variety of ways—from bitterness to stiff upper lip. Said Virginia Grey, who is sometimes called Hollywood’s “most gorgeous blonde”: “Oh my God! Is it true?” Pretty Elaine White, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer secretary: “Well, I sure wasted a Christmas card, I guess.” Producer Joan Harrison: “We were just good friends.” Long before the fact, Paulette Goddard was quoted as saying: “That’s that. So long, sugar.” In San Francisco, as the Gables started on a Hawaiian honeymoon, several hundred unidentified girls-left-behind shouted, screamed and caused a near riot outside the newlyweds’ suite aboard the Lurline.

Industrial Engineer Harold G. Matthews, owner of the yacht Almar II on which New York’s Mayor William O’Dwyer, 59, and the former Sloan Simpson, 33, were honeymooning last week, advanced one theory as to why the Irish-born onetime city cop fell in love with the Texas-born onetime model: “She not only is a charming girl, but she makes a wonderful, mulligan stew.”

In Lisbon, Lady Bullfighter Conchita Cintron declared that she would soon give up the razzle-dazzle of the ring for the tranquillity of marriage. Her future husband, she said, is Dom Francisco Castelo Branco, a government official in Por tuguese East Africa. She plans to marry him by proxy next September.

A broad hint by the mother of lush, brunette Café Singer Gigi Durston that her daughter would marry Elliott Roosevelt was called “premature” by Television Actress Faye Emerson, who pointed out that she and Elliott are still married. Said Faye: “I’m not put out, but I just like to announce my own divorces.”

A good spanking for Cinemactress Elizabeth Taylor, 17, was recommended by the Sunday Pictorial, a London tabloid, because “her behavior in breaking off engagements has become as silly as a schoolboy smoking cigars.” Meanwhile, in Hollywood, beautiful Elizabeth had a date with a new fellow: Home Run Slugger Ralph Kiner of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

All in a Day’s Work

Michigan’s Governor G. Mennen (“Soapy”) Williams was momentarily startled when he arrived at Boysville school in Michigan for a Christmas party. A group of youths hurriedly lined up to greet him. They carried placards which were supposed to spell out H-E-L-L-O GOVERNOR. In the confusion one of the boys ran to the wrong place in line. The placards spelled out O-H-E-L-L GOVERNOR.

The Duchess of Windsor has “received several offers” of jobs, the Duke of Windsor announced in Cherbourg as they sailed for the U.S. “I know that everybody has to work today,” said the Duke. “I am writing at present three articles of memoire which will be published in the United States.”

Right after lunch is the best time for portraits of important men, famed Portrait Photographers Fabian and Bradford Bachrach told the New York Herald Tribune’s Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenburg. One of the Bachrachs’ most difficult subjects, they said, was Thomas E. Dewey. The toughest of all was the late Rorello La Guardia, who “would never sit still.” They recalled their favorite “trick”—on overworked President Herbert Hoover at the start of the 1932 presidential campaign. He was too tired to sit erect when he came in for the sitting: “We stacked seven books in a chair and asked Mr. Hoover to sit on the books. He had to sit erect and alert, to keep from falling off the books.”

In Copenhagen, Puffed Wheat Heir John Pierce Anderson, an abstract artist of Red Wing, Minn., gave an adequate performance in a tough role. As he arrived in Denmark with Madam Ambassador Eugenie Anderson and their two children, he was asked the inevitable question (“How does it feel to be the husband of the first U.S. woman ambassador?”). Anderson thought solemnly for a moment, eyed the reporters with a twinkle and muttered: “A difficult question.”

Some bad financial advice prompted Treasurer of the U.S. Georgia Neese Clark to sell all her U.S. Government bonds. Now she can’t buy any new ones, she disclosed in Washington. Before taking the post, she said, attorneys advised her that it was illegal for the Treasurer to hold any U.S. Government securities. She learned too late that the Treasurer may keep any U.S. bonds already owned when assuming the post, may not buy any new ones after taking office.

A Matter of Opinion

In Hollywood, a depressing style note was recorded by eight-year-old Cinemoppet Gigi Perreau: “I think it looks kind of funny for old ladies to be wearing ruffles. Imagine! Some of them are even over 30!”

Producer-on-wheels Margaret Webster, back in Manhattan temporarily after carrying Shakespeare to the hinterlands, declared that she “felt free” only when she was away from New York. Most of her non-Broadway audiences had never seen a professional play before and “they approach a play in the same manner they would a football match. If they enjoy it they stamp and whistle wildly at the end . . . They eat everything, gum, popcorn, crispies. We know the show’s been a success by the size of the pile of candy wrappers left behind.”

After nearly three years of study, hard work, personal appearances and concert tours around the U.S., Soprano Margaret Truman figured that she was ready for her New York debut. After her half-hour Carnegie Hall concert last week, sponsored on a network hookup by the American Oil Co., she got a kiss from Opera Star Lauritz Melchior and a notice from the New York Herald Tribune’s Critic Virgil Thomson who wrote: “Few artists now appearing before the public have Miss Truman’s physical advantages, and almost none other has her dignity.” But as for “temperament, the quality that enables a musician to bring music to life, she seemed to have none at all. [She] is obliged to [sing carefully] by the poverty of her resources . . . Only at the end of each piece, when she stopped singing and smiled and became the lovely Miss Truman again, did she seem to make real contact with the guests of the evening.”

The Philadelphia Athletics’ indestructible Connie Mack admitted at 87, for the first time, that he might conceivably be getting along in years: “I was reading in the paper the other day about the Sand birthday of Pudge Heffelfinger [Yale’s all-America football star of 1889-91] . . . When the newspapers start printing news of Pudge Heffelfinger’s 82nd birthday, I must be growing old.”