People: Day of Days

When His Highness the Maharaja of Kolhapur died two years ago he left no son. A search was begun for a suitable heir-apparent to rule some day over the million inhabitants of the little State. At length a ten-year-old boy who was named Pratap Singh Rao Bhonsle was chosen, and plans were immediately laid for the elaborate ceremonies of adoption. The Maharani of Kolhapur consulted with her astrologers and learned that the proper time for the rites was indubitably the 28th of September. The Government of India was informed of this, and agreed, and said so be it. But the father and mother of little Pratap Singh Rao Bhonsle had been studying things out with their own soothsayers, and these cried that the 28th of September was a calamitous choice for at least four different astrological reasons, and very quickly in the soothsaying circles of Kolhapur things were at sixes & sevens. The British Raj was informed and the date was canceled. Then the Government of India came up with a new date entirely—October 18—and that was the very date of dates, all the astrologers agreed, and so on that day next week little Pratap Singh Rao Bhonsle will become official heir-apparent to the gadi of Kolhapur, and some day, if all goes well, he may bear the title of Lord of the Umbrella and get a 19-gun salute.

Dollarosa

For publishing a story that he had “shortchanged” some performers 74¢ apiece on their rehearsal pay, veteran Broadway Producer Jacob J. (“Jake”) Shubert sued the theatrical trade paper Variety for libel, asked $100,000 damages.

Bad blood among some Barnum & Bailey sideshow performers produced a dressing-tent brawl in Kansas City involving the fat lady, Baby Betty, Sword-Swallower Patricia Smith, The Great Shackles, and a hula dancer. (The midgets ran out.) For hitting Baby over the head with a pop bottle, Swallower Patricia was fined $20 by a city judge. She said it was worth it. Shortly 500-odd-pound Baby sued the swallower for $3,000. The bottle had hit her so hard, she claimed, that “all bones, muscles, tissues, nerves and my entire body were bruised, contused, lacerated and sprained.” Old Fashioned Leg-Art Note: Cinemactress Anne Shirley sued a Hollywood studio for $100,000 because the studio used a double’s legs in one close-up and “said double’s legs were of unflattering dimensions.”

War Effort

On a chocolate soda, a sandwich, occasional sips of water, vast, durable Kate Smith topped the shattering, 17-hour war-bond-selling grind of moderately vast Charles Laughton (TIME, Oct. 12) by three hours and $1,675,550. She sat down at a mike at Manhattan’s WABC at 6 a.m., one minute later answered the first phone call from a bond-buyer, answered calls for the next 20 hours at the rate of two a minute. At 6 p.m. she complained of a sore neck, asked somebody to hit her. No one did. At 2 the following morning she had taken $1,977,450 worth of orders.

Hemispheric Cooperation: To enliven the routine task of a Washington news photographer covering the wedding of Lieut. Francisco Castillo Najera, son of the Mexican Ambassador, and Seńorita Alicia Calvillo of Mexico City, the groom swept his bride off her feet, staged a rare tableau of best-dressed romance (see cut). Animal Fair: Some 2,000 dogs which will do Coast Guard shore patrol work went into training on the estate of Joseph E. Widener, multimillionaire Philadelphia art patron and horse breeder. Into the Army for training went Gogo and Cliquot, green-eyed Cinemactress Greer Garson’s Fighting French poodles. On tour with her husband, Lady Halifax visited the St. Louis Zoo, unflinchingly did the monkeyshines expected of a diplomat’s wife (see cut).

Curvilinear Cinemactress Joan Blondell got herself a fresh hairdo, a new fur coat, headed for Greenland and Iceland to entertain the armed forces. Manhattan socialite Edith Kingdon Gould, linguist (5), ex-child-poetess, 22-year-old great-granddaughter of the late, great Robber Baron Jay Gould, joined the WAVES, went off to train at Madison, Wis.

U.S. troops in Northern Ireland pored fondly over thousands of pictures of girls back home, studied and studied, finally chose as “Sweetheart of the A.E.F,” Janet Barry, 18-year-old typist of Belmar, N.J., because.

War & Peace Effort

News that Tolstoy’s War and Peace was to be filmed drew cries of anxious alarm from such Britons as H. G. Wells, Compton Mackenzie, Eric Linklater, and produced in the London Times a letter: “With dismay we have heard that it is to be made into a cinematograph film. . . We would ask what degree of supervision, and by whom, is to be exercised. . . .” Promptly came the answer from Sir Alexander Korda, who snickered and rumbled in rich Magyarish English: “This Victorian phrase, ‘with dismay’ and ‘cinematograph film’ just slays me. You would think it would be someone from Barbaria who would come to undo a masterpiece. I just try to make a good ‘cinematograph film.’ ” Famed Russian Directors Eisenstein and Pudovkin had promised to help, added Korda.