People: People, Sep. 27, 1943

Disputants

The Aga Sultan Sir Mohammed Shah, 66—the Aga Khan for short —pear-shaped, sybaritic lord & master of several million Ismailite Mohammedans,* parted from his beauteous Begum in Geneva after 14 years. Slim daughter of a French innkeeper, one of the official Best-Dressed-Women, as Begum she had succeeded an Italian (who had succeeded an Indian), made him a father for the second time at 55. Details of the divorce were not disclosed. Fabulously rich, the food-and-fun-loving Aga has been cut off from most of his wealth since he fled to Switzerland from a French spa in 1940. That year he figured, for publication, that he had “enough to live on for a year.” But his followers in India (who used to pay him for his bath water, bottled) plan to hand him his weight in diamonds on his diamond jubilee, year after next. At last reports he weighed 275 pounds.

Rutherford (“Rusty”) Hatch, grandson of the late Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, was sued for a separation in Manhattan by his second wife, Claire, after nine months. She charged that he drank “to the point where he became violent, abusive, and at times unconscious.” From the Princeton Club, Hatch commented: “Whenever a girl marries a Vanderbilt, she gets the wildest expectations.”

Mrs. Adolf A. Berle Jr., wife of the Assistant Secretary of State, was charged with fraud by her mother, Mrs. Amy Bend Bishop, widow of the late Manhattan art dealer Cortlandt Field Bishop. Mrs. Bishop asked a Manhattan court to set aside a half-million-dollar settlement her daughter had won in a suit against Bishop’s estate in 1938 (Mrs. Berle had been disinherited). By taking advantage of her when she had no attorney, Mrs. Bishop charged, Mrs. Berle had persuaded her to sign a paper that lost her $513,000 of her own inheritance.

Katina Paxinou, the tattered, cave-dwelling Pilar of Hollywood’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, was sued for $17,391 in Manhattan by Marian Dothwell, a British actress, who said she had lent it to Miss Paxinou in her pre-Hollywood days. Miss Dothwell charged that much of the money had gone for beautification and nourishment at the Ritz in London. Miss Paxinou’s younger sister, Barbara, backed the charges with a helpful affidavit.

Offspring

Ernest Hemingway once wrote—apparently of his own father—in Fathers and Sons: “He shot very quickly and beautifully. I’d rather see him shoot than any man I ever knew. He was always very disappointed in the way I shot. . . . My father only gave me three shells a day because he said that would teach me to hunt and it wasn’t good for a boy to go banging around.” Last week from Havana came news that Hemingway’s eleven-year-old son Gregory Hancock (“Gigi”), trained by his father, had outshot all but one of 38 grown-up marksmen in Cuba’s National Pigeon Shooting Championship. Gigi had scored 29 out of 30, while Champion Miguel Adolfo (“Fatty”) Garcia made a perfect score. “Gigi,” cried Havana’s Diario de la Marina, “was applauded deliriously . . . all records of enthusiasm were broken . . .”

A. A. Milne’s 24-year-old son Christopher Robin, hippity-hopping hero of When We Were Very Young, was one of the Britons fighting near Salerno.

Caleb Frank (“Turk”) Gates Jr., 39-year-old chancellor of the University of Denver, .Princeton football and track star of the ’20s, son of the longtime president of Robert College in Constantinople, won a major’s commission in the Army’s Specialist Reserve, will probably be sent to Turkey as an intelligence officer.

Politicos

Senator Alben Barldey of Kentucky clutched convulsively at his pride and howled in pain when he learned that Montana’s Burton K. Wheeler had contended that Kentucky has a desert training center. “A desert in country like Kentucky!” Barkley cried. “Why, there is more sand and scrub in the City Park in Butte . . . than there is in the whole of the old Kentucky home.” He found a transcript of the Montanan’s remarks, fell to studying, presently announced that Wheeler must have had Fort Knox’s cookery school in mind and meant to say “dessert.”

Frank Knox, asked in London his opinion on the 1944 election, declared: “I used to be a Republican, but I took the veil, and I intend to keep the veil until the war is over.”

Wendell Willkie, according to Danish refugees in Sweden, is the current bestseller in Denmark, despite the fact that the selling of One World is all underground.

Fala, at the age of 3½, turned up at a Presidential press conference for the first time in reporters’ memories, crawled cautiously toward them from under a chair, sniffed curiously at a few shoes, remained immaculate and noncommittal.

*Estimated variously from ten to 100 million.