People: People, Sep. 1, 1941

Travel Bureau

U.S. citizens will have only fleeting glimpses of the Duke of Windsor and his Duchess when the couple go to Canada. The U.S. State Department has issued them only transit visas, ∙ ∙ After a three-month separation the First Lady of Ethiopia has left Britain to join Haile Selossie in Addis Ababa, ∙ ∙ When the Mayor of Wilkes-Barre, Pa. learned Fiorello H. LaGuardia would stop at the city airport en route from Syracuse to New York City, he declared a public holiday. New York City’s hedgehopping Mayor flew over the field, circled several times, winged off. ∙ ∙ In Portland, Ore., an empty car rolled away from the curb, rammed a car driven by former Senator Rush Dew Holt of West Virginia.

The War Department switchboard misrouted a call from Lieut. Commander Walter Winchell, gave him a tabulating machine operator. “This is Walter Winchell,” said Winchell. “I’m calling about my appointment with [the] General.” The figure-adder blanched, turned to his boss, breathed: “My God! It’s Walter Winchell,” fainted.

Season Opens

At 3:30 a.m., in Manhattan’s Stork Club, Debutante Lenore Lemmon and oil-wealthy Marian Snowden (Princess) Rospigliosi Reed Dresser had words over Lenore’s style of dancing with Marian’s Bradley S. Dresser. Blows swung or landed were not tallied, but next morning Lenore and friends got wires from the club announcing: “We do not now or ever want your patronage.” ∙ ∙ Four hours after pretty Nancy Golden, who said she was Press Agent Richard Money’s secretary, had rented a horse for a ride in Central Park, the riding academy sent out a searching party of cops. It turned out Miss Golden and the horse had been visiting bars between Park Avenue and Times Square. When the cops found her she was trying to teach the horse the tango. ∙ ∙ A hotel in Del Monte, Calif, got an order from Surrealist Salvador Dali for party decorations. The order: 2,000 pine trees, 5,000 gunny sacks, 4,000 pounds of newspapers, four truckloads of pumpkins and melons, one wrecked automobile, one baby giraffe, three goats.

Aboard a yacht in Mobile Bay, Alabama’s Adjutant General Ben M. Smith was presented to blue-eyed, blonde Evie Robert, wife of Contractor “Chip” Robert, former New Deal favorite. Courtly General Smith bowed low, took a step backward, prat-fell into the harbor.

Taboo

“Every night these women rushed me,” reported Mexican Cinesinger Tito Guizar after a trip to Cuba. “They followed me . . . kissed and hugged me … cut locks from my hair . . . cut pieces of my suits . . . undershirts and underwear. . . .” Promptly Cuban film exhibitors banned Guizar from’ the country’s screens for what Cuba declared was an insult to the dignity of its women, ∙ ∙ John Steinbeck’s Mexican documentary film, The Forgotten Village, was banned as “indecent” by New York’s State Board of Censors. It contains childbirth sequences. ∙ ∙ Mae Murray, suing Billy Ros& for $150,000 for invasion of privacy, lost a plea to prohibit Georges Fontana and Mitzi Haynes from doing the Merry Widow Waltz at Rose’s Manhattan nightclub. Her version of it with John Gilbert re-popularized the dance 16 years ago.

The Duke of Kent visited Hyde Park and Eleanor Roosevelt told reporters that food in general and fruit in particular was a topic of conversation. He had told, she said, that in Canada his eyes had beheld for the first time in many months an orange and a banana.

Love and Otherwise

Manhattan’s fanciest divorce story of the season collapsed as Mrs. Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt suddenly dropped her suit against her young sportsman husband and “an amicable separation” was announced. ∙ ∙ In Chicago Joe Louis and his Marva suddenly became reconciled in the midst of a battle over temporary alimony. Joe carried her from a courtroom in his arms, exclaiming: “Boy, this is like getting married all over again!” Announced was a “trial reconciliation,” dated to run till Sept. 29—day of the Nova fight. ∙ ∙ To Barbara Hutton, in Los Angeles, wired Cinemactor Cary Grant, in Mexico City: “The weather is fine and the scenery wonderful.” Promptly the Woolworth heiress flew to the border, set off Mexico Citywards in an air-conditioned limousine with a friend, a chauffeur, a maid, a bodyguard. Her agent announced: “It is not an elopement.” ∙ ∙ Gilt-haired Evangelist A’imee Semple McPherson, thrice-married, twice-divorced, approved a new bylaw adopted by her International Church of the Four Square Gospel. It prohibits a divorced minister from remarrying. ∙ ∙ Oldtime Cinemactress Constance Binney, 40, revealed she had been secretly married for nearly a month to a 22-year-old flight lieutenant in the R.A.F., Geoffrey Leonard Cheshire. ∙ ∙ Philadelphia society’s former Princess Ruth Pignatelli, fighting for a divorce from her second husband, Broker James C. Brazelle, denied she bought a gentleman jockey friend a $250 set of store teeth. Husband Brazelle asked “reasonable support and maintenance.” ∙ ∙ Princess Olga Troubetzskoi of the Philadelphia Social Register pleaded guilty to vagrancy when put on trial, charged with running a high-toned bawdy house in Manhattan.

Hard Times

In sugar-rationed England Princess Margaret Rose, who turned eleven, was presented with a birthday cake with no icing. ∙ ∙ Eleanor Roosevelt turned up at East Otis, Mass, wearing cotton stockings. ∙ ∙ Caddies at a Bar Harbor club went on strike, and Edsel Ford had to lug his own golf bag around the course. ∙ ∙ Madeleine Carroll asked the U.S. Government to hand back $9,092.55 in income taxes, claiming 51 little French refugees as dependents.

Hearth & Home

The Dionne Quintuplets may soon be living with their folks. Provincial Secretary Harry Corwin Nixon of Ontario says that the seven-year-old quints, who have spent all but the first four months of their lives in the Dafoe nursery, have reached the age of reason, no longer need the State’s guardianship, and ought to lead “a more normal life.” ∙ ∙ Major General Amos Alfred Fries, 68-year-old retired chief of chemical warfare, won a sharp skirmish with District of Columbia authorities over the height of his privet hedge. They said it was three feet higher than the three-foot maximum for hedges growing on public property, ordered him to slice it in half. The general refused. Came men with yardsticks, who found only four of its 14 bushes were in the public domain. The authorities relaxed in silence. ∙ ∙ Adolf Hitler has ordered the former castle of Kaiser Wilhelm II in Posen (part of Poland 1919-39) remodeled, plans to use it himself.

The cinema’s quickest-rising starlet of the year, tiny, honey-haired honey Constance Keane Detlie (Veronica Lake), gave birth to a daughter (6 lb., 2 oz.) at a Hollywood hospital. Her husband is Art Director John Detlie. Same day her leading man, William Holden, was in the hospital for an appendectomy.

Past Masters

Tommy Milfon, champion racing driver of the early ’20s, crashed with another car at a Detroit street crossing; one woman was killed. ∙ ∙ Driving in San Diego, Al Schacht, longtime “Clown Prince” of baseball, collided with a motorcycle. The cyclist and passenger were fatally injured. ∙ ∙ Banjo King Eddie Peabody, submarine veteran of World War I, is now a lieutenant commander in the Navy, running entertainments at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. ∙ ∙ Oldtime Heavyweight Champion James J. Jeffries is playing himself in a movie now in the works in Hollywood. Other members of the cast: Francis X. Bushman and Clara Kimball Young.