People: People, Aug. 13, 1945

To Have & Have Not

General Joseph Stilwell lost his 20-odd-year-old campaign hat while flying over Okinawa, posted a $25 reward for its return. Four hours later, one of several hundred busy hat-hunters sighted it floating 200 yards offshore. The General got it back dripping, happily wrung it out, hung it up to dry. A corporal got the reward.

Robert Ley, bibulous onetime No. 8 Nazi, had an idea for stimulating his confessing. What he needed, he said, was a nice blonde secretary. His Allied jailors thought not.

Lauren Bacall, not quite 21, suggested to a Los Angeles court that her marriage to Humphrey Bogart had made her an adult under California law. Objectives to be won by a decree of majority: 1) the 10% of her movie pay that had been withheld for her coming-of-age, 2) cancellation of a trust fund that sets aside another 10% for her mother’s benefit.

Haile Selassie, who got back his empire in 1941, got back 800 lbs. of royal baggage and bric-a-brac the Italians had stolen from his palace. U.S. Strategic Services rounded up the loot—350 items, everything from silverware to kingly robes —in Northern Italy, then flew the lot to Addis Ababa by special plane.

Tommy Farr, battle-scarred ex-British heavyweight champ, who stayed upright for 15 rounds with Joe Louis in 1937, won an upside-down battle with an infection that nearly cost him an eye. For an hour and a half each day, for 21 days, he lay head down while a penicillin solution was filtered through his nose into his eye.

Eva Tanguay, famed for two decades as vaudeville’s song-shouting “I Don’t Care” girl, reached 67 at her tiny Hollywood bungalow, partially paralyzed, completely blind, almost broke. “I will see no one,” she said. “I prefer to be remembered as I was.”

Literary Lights

Sigrid Undset, 63-year-old Nobel Prize Novelist (Kristin Lavransdatter), finally got back to her native Norway after five years in exile—mostly in Brooklyn Heights. Norwegian reports did not say whether she had returned to her old home, of which she once remarked: “It is full of Gestapo women and their brats. … I can’t imagine living in [it]. . . . You could never clean the stink of it.”

Kathleen Winsor’s sultry Forever Amber finally hit a snag. Banning the bestseller as undesirable, Australian Minister for Trade and Customs Richard Keane explained that “the Almighty didn’t give people eyes to read that sort of thing.”

George Bernard Shaw, recoiling from his self-imposed birthday silence, bestowed a characteristic Shavian blessing on the new Attlee Government: “I shall not inflict my congratulations on the Labor ministers. They have come into an unholy mess of bankruptcy and ruin.” He also had an I-told-you-so for beaten Candidate Sir William Beveridge: “His defeat will teach Sir William (he would not take it from me) that the Liberal who goes out of his way to disavow Socialism is doomed.”

Back to Earth

Francis Biddle lost the right to a No Parking sign in front of his Washington home after signless neighbors had reminded police that Mr. Biddle was no longer Attorney General of the U.S.

Charles A. Lindbergh, who likes to live alone and finds living on an island the best way, bought land on four islands off the Connecticut shore, near Darien. Conn. Former Lindbergh island homes: one off Brittany’s coast, another off Massachusetts (Martha’s Vineyard). Included: 36-acres of oyster-beds.

Lieut. Jackie Coogan, 30, Hollywood’s onetime “Kid” who grew up to marry Betty Grable (and be divorced by her) was released from the Army after four years’ service, mostly with glider troops. Acquired in that time: the Air Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster and a Presidential Unit Citation. Lost: more hair.

Sideline Skills

Clare Boothe Luce, reasoning that if vacation-time fishing trips are good for Congressmen, a little summer-theater acting might be just the thing for a playwrighting (The Women) Congresswoman, wound up rehearsals for her on-stage debut this week—in the title role of George Bernard Shaw’s Candida, at Stamford, Conn.

Monty Woolley, who looks more like an old Mack Sennett diplomat than a city father, was the victim of a write-in vote of 20 friends in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. They did it without warning him, but found him willing to play it straight the rest of the way. Monty will be Mayor of the town if he can beat the present Mayor in the finals.

Frank Sinatra plunged into the water off San Pedro, Calif., rescued a three-year-old boy from drowning, bashfully disappeared before the newspaper photographers arrived.

Richard Frankensteen, beefy international vice president of the United Auto Workers, and candidate for Mayor of Detroit, broke out his hobby collection for photographers just before the Detroit primary, in a last-minute bid for the women’s vote. The hobby: dolls.

Family Matters

Alois Hitler, Adolf’s halfbrother, was released from custody by the British, who had queried him for six weeks and now pronounced him harmless. “It is clear to us,” ran a dry but lightly carbonated statement by the British military government, “that he has led a perfectly blameless existence, being absolutely scared stiff of being associated in any way with the Führer’s activities.”

Libby Holman, torch-singing widow of Tobacco Heir (Camels) Zachary Smith Reynolds, was managing to keep expenses down to her prewar level, according to a guardians’ report filed in Baltimore. It showed that last year’s maintenance of son Christopher, 12, had cost the singer a routine $83,333,28.

Queen Elizabeth had a ringing week. It began when Metropolitan Opera Star Marjorie Lawrence sang for her at Buckingham Palace and Princess Elizabeth’s dog Crackers (a Corgi) barked during a Carmen aria (excitement, explained the Queen). Then the bells of St. Paul’s paid tribute, for the first time since the start of the war, to the Queen’s birthday (her 45th).

Lieut. Colonel Archibald Roosevelt, only surviving son* of the original “Teddy,” was retired from active service at 51. He had been ailing off & on since he was shipped home sick from New Guinea in 1944, was last stationed at Georgia’s Camp Gordon.

* Paul McGrath.

* His three brothers died in uniform. Flyer Quentin was killed in World War I; Major Kermit died in Alaska in 1943; Brig. General Theodore Jr., in Normandy in 1944.