People: History Makers

Lieut. John Gilbert Winant Jr., 22-year-old son of the Ambassador to Britain, missing in action after his Flying Fortress was shot down in the Münster raid in mid-October, turned out to be alive and well in a German prison camp.

Simon Eden, 19-year-old elder son of the British Foreign Secretary, was a new elementary flight student at an R.C.A.F. training school in Regina.

William S. Paley, elegant-dressing president of the Columbia Broadcasting System, was ready for shipment overseas to join OWI’s psychological warfare crews in the Mediterranean area. Off & on for a week he had been doing muscle building, studying pamphleteering, intelligence gathering, short-wave receiving at the indoctrination school on the vast Marshall Field estate on Long Island. Cartier, the dazzling Manhattan jewelry firm, had finished his dog tag.*

Franklin Roosevelt, six years ago the object of grammarians’ tuts for his liking for “like” in the wrong places, escaped another tutting by a blue pencil’s stroke. Conning ahead of time the text of a minor Roosevelt speech, New York Times Pundit Arthur Krock encountered “like in many cases,” quickly phoned a Presidential aide. The President, reached in time, made it “as.”

Music Makers

David Rubinoff, Schmaltz King of the fiddle, saw the special nightmare of Stradivarius owners come true: while he was preparing to play in Columbus, Ohio, his 213-year-old Strad (insured for $100,000) fell out of its case and broke.

John Golden, 69-year-old Broadway producer (Three’s A Family), who wrote the lyric of Poor Butterfly, was the author of a new one: the official theme song of New York City’s Department of Sanitation. Sample:

From the Bay to Spuyten Duyvil Residents welcome our arrival, Cheering us on to do our work for all we’re worth.

We’re the guardians of their health, And if it’s true that health is wealth, We’ll make New York the wealthiest town on earth. . . .

Picture Makers

Samuel Goldwyn cleared up a point for a New York Times interviewer who asked him: “Do producers really make stars?” Confessed Producer Goldwyn: “As a matter of fact, they don’t. God makes stars and the public recognizes His handi-work.”

Walt Disney was elected a trustee of Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art.

Helen Hayes, Ruth Chatterton, Gertrude Lawrence, Mary Martin and Myrna Loy merged histrionic fireworks to plug the National War Fund in a crowded playlet entitled Untitled. More sacrificially, they also put their charms together in a line and bravely faced the candid cruelty of a news camera (see cut). Silver lining for the actresses was the local (Manhattan) record of the Women’s Division of the Fund: gathered midway in a drive for $800,000, with less than 20% of the prospects called on, was $704,567.

Haymakers

Archduke Franz Josef, natty, 38-year-old distant cousin of Otto, turned out to have been a “steerer” for Manhattan’s swank Sherry-Netherland Hotel. Papers in a lawsuit (now settled) showed that the Archduke had his own rooms there at half price and earned a 5 to 10% commission on the rents paid by guests he brought in (one was Glandmaster Serge Voronoff) But the war boom in the hotel busines broke it all up. The Archduke got a job with a brokerage house, moved across the street to the Savoy-Plaza.

Mrs. Cornelius W. Dresselhuys smart, blonde asbestos heiress (sister of Playboy Tommy Manville), gave a sort of farewell luncheon at the Ritz-Carlton for friends she feared might be too busy for such things for the rest of 1943. She explained: “They’re all war workers.” Among them: diamond-studded Mrs. Byron Foy, Mrs. Muriel Vanderbilt Church Phelps, Consuelo Vanderbilt Smith Davis Warburton. Eaten: supreme of melon in port wine, boned squab with white grapes new peas in butter, hearts of endive and beet roots and fine herbs, floating heart ice cream with figs, petit fours, demitasse. It was meatless Tuesday.

Richard Roswell Lyman, towering teetotaling, 73-year-old bigwig of the Mormons (5th-ranking member of th sect’s Council of Twelve Apostles), was the subject of a brief, grim announcement from headquarters. “Notice is hereby given,” it ran, “that after due hearing before the Council of Twelve Apostles and upon his own confession [he] has beenexcommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for violation of the Christian law of chastity.” Lyman was the twelfth Apostle to be excommunicated since the sect was founded. He was the son of an Apostle, the grandson of an Apostle (excommunicated on theologic grounds in 1870), a notably eloquent champion of the straight & narrow.

*Army lingo for identification disk.