People: People, Dec. 6, 1943

Society

James H. R. Cromwell, having sued Doris Duke for divorce in New Jersey and having been sued in return in Nevada, got an injunction forbidding her temporarily to go on with her suit, which was scheduled to come up in court this week.

He charged that she had moved to Reno to “perpetrate a fraud on the New Jersey and Nevada courts”—that is, not to become a Nevadan but just to become an exwife.

Carol of Rumania, now of Mexico, prevented from broadcasting to the U.S. by the Office of Censorship at the last minute (“Owing to considerations that we are not at liberty to disclose”), held a press conference and got a few sentiments off his chest. He absolutely did not want to be King again, he swore, but added: “A monarchy often is more democratic than a republic.” He explained:”A monarchy has more continuity. Under a monarchy you have just one large, happy family.

The monarch is a sort of father. . . .” The Duke & Duchess of Windsor were back in the Bahamas, their visit to the Duchess’ Aunt Bessie Merryman in Boston having extended itself into the couple’s longest U.S. stay—two months, mostly in Manhattan.

Performers

Captain James Stewart, out of Hollywood stardom and into a quiet Army career eight months before Pearl Harbor, is now head of a Liberator squadron in England, will probably soon be fighting over Europe—the first Hollywood star to engage in regular combat there.*Paul Wittgenstein’s piano playing and Max Reiter’s conducting will be long remembered in San Antonio musical circles.

Wittgenstein, for whom Maurice Ravel wrote his Concerto for Left Hand, is the world’s N01 one-armed pianist. Conductor Reiter fractured his right foot a few days before the concert. While the pianist played left-anded, the conductor conducted left-footed, holding his game foot gingerly aloft.

Shirley Temple, 14, periodically publicized as having grown yet a little bit more, was at last really grown up. Broadway Columnist Ed Sullivan gossiped: “Air Cadet Andrew Hotchkiss Jr. will pop the question to Shirley Temple.” Litterateurs

Alexander Woollcott, who enjoyed a six-digit income in his best years and gave much of it away, left an estate of some $70,000. His longtime secretary, Joseph Hennessey, said that the writer left practically all of it to two men: Hennessey himself and Captain Frode Jensen, a 35-year-old member of the Army Medical Corps in the Mediterranean. Danish-born

Jensen had come to the U.S. as a cabin boy, and Woollcott had helped him through medical school, ultimately made him his attending physician. Other Woollcott bequests: to Hamilton College (his alma mater), his library; to Harvard, a silver ruler Franklin D. Roosevelt gave him.

Beatrice Ayer Patton, in the midst of the hurly-burly about her husband (see p. 69), published in This Week a short story about a scared soldier. Apropos her husband’s difficulties, she. recalled: “I think I’m a good mother, but I can remember all too well punishing my children in the heat of disappointment or shock and wishing later I hadn’t. … He made a mistake—and it can’t be undone—I just hope they won’t kick him to death while he’s down.” Clifton Fadiman, in his last month as The New Yorker’s book critic, was reported by friends to be playing with the idea of running for Congress. He emphatically commented: “Ridiculous!” Old Sports

Gene Sarazen, Golden Age golf champion, sold his 200-acre Connecticut farm to radio’s Gabriel Heatter for some $85,-ooo, said he was through with “serious” golf for good, had got rid of the farm to concentrate on selling precision tools. Now 41, he observed: “Pretty soon it won’t be a question of whether I can play four rounds in a championship but whether I can walk them.” Henry Krakow, who as “King Levinsky” was a notable clown among the heavyweights (and lasted 141 seconds with Joe Louis), was picked up in Detroit for Chicago detectives who wanted to talk to him about a holdup. Now 33, he says he sells neckties for a living.*Katherine Rawls, 26, greatest all-round woman swimmer before the war, was expected back home in Florida by Husband Theodore H. Thompson, who sued her for divorce and then dropped it as “a misunderstanding on my part.” She has been a Women’s Auxiliary Service flyer stationed at Detroit, but Thompson said she would now concentrate on taking care of his farm, do her war work in her spare time.

Patients

Senator Charles L McNary, 69-year-old minority leader, recovering nicely from an operation for a brain tumor, was set to leave the Bethesda, Md. Naval Hospital this week.

Marvin H. Mclntyre, White House secretary for the last ten years, spent his 65th birthday confined to his house, after several weeks’ recuperation from overwork.

General Charles de Gaulle was laid up with flu—described as “sharp but not serious.”

* Clark Gable flew in five raids, but his job was primarily picture-taking. — Story goes that, on the morning of a solar eclipse in Chicago, Levinsky emerged from his hotel, was puzzled to observe a man staring at the sky through a bit of smoked glass, Levinsky commandeered the glass, stared at the disappearing sun, handed back the glass with the comment: “Gee, dat’s bad ain’t it?”