People: Kinfolks

Margaret Truman, who tried out on the radio five months ago, announced that she would sing in public for the first time next week. Scene of her debut: the Hollywood Bowl (capacity: 25,000).

Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., 33, seemed to be going places fast. He was summoned to appear in traffic court on a charge of speeding at 52 m.p.h. in a playful race near U.N. headquarters on Long Island with wife Ethel du Pont Roosevelt (who got a summons, too). He was also appointed legal counsel for the A.F.L.’s Upholsterers International Union of North America.

The Shah of Persia’s beauteous twin sister, Princess Ashraf Pahlevi, who said she wanted to “familiarize myself with methods of social work,” was the latest Mohammedan celebrity to set out on a U.S. visit.

Literary Flourishes

German-born Erich Maria (All Quiet) Remarque finally became a U.S. citizen after eight successful years in the country, declared he would now examine the regions with which he was unfamiliar—i.e., everywhere except Hollywood and Manhattan. New Citizen Remarque reported a new sensation: “You walk and look around in a different way … it really means something to belong here.”

Standard Classic Count Maurice (The Blue Bird) Maeterlinck, still a Belgian, sailed back to Europe after seven years in the U.S. (mostly Manhattan and Palm Beach), left behind him a damage suit against Dodd, Mead & Co., publishers. He complained that they had fallen down on the job of publishing his works and protecting his interests. He wanted $250,000.

Columnist Igor Cassini, who as Cholly Knickerbocker is Hearst’s No. i know-it-all-&-tell-it-all on society, got scooped on a gossipy item involving his stylish wife, Austine Cassini, writer of society gossip for the Washington Times-Herald. In a rival paper, Cassini read a breathless, unconfirmed rumor that “Bootsie”—dubbed last year the Most Magnificent Doll Among American Newspaperwomen—had settled down in Reno to divorce him.

Gene Tunney, most scholarly of the ex-world heavyweight champs, turned up in the Saturday Review of Literature as a literary critic. Novelist Budd Schulberg’s pugilistic The Harder They Fall) wrote Critic Tunney, was “a vulgar book about vulgar people,” but “very cleverly written.” He read it twice, declared the retired champ: “I did not get the full significance of its gems of wit . . . until the second reading.”

Social Graces

At gracious old Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Cinemactor Don Ameche, Hollywood’s No. 1 impersonator of great inventors, posed for his picture in a nightclub, thus irritated a neighboring drunk, presently found himself deep in an exchange of unpleasantries. Ameche wound up and threw a punch, four pretty models screamed, the drunk was thrown out. Ameche’s punch had missed, but the season was under way.

On Bailey’s Beach, at staid old Newport, R.I., the ex-Mrs. F. Bartholomay Jelke encountered the present Mrs. F. Bartholomay Jelke, wife of the heir to oleomargarine millions, and briskly conked her with an inflated inner tube.

At Miami Beach, which has been rather quiet, arrived Virginia Hill, high-strung girl friend of the late Gangster Bugsy Siegel. Virginia had flown from France, where she had swung at a reporter and kicked at photographers. Police met her at New York and engaged her in private chitchat between planes. On the Miami airfield she told reporters she had nothing to say, and, between chomps on her gum, asked them if they didn’t understand English. She then joined the police again. They took her to her classy island home in Biscayne Bay, where she settled down to enjoy the climate with hired guards in residence.

Affairs of State

In New York, where a summertime war on bookies brought on a shake-up in the police department, Mayor William O’Dwyer made realistic reply when he was asked if he thought a shake-up could really kill bookmaking: “I see very hopeful signs of that in the atom bomb.”

In Boston, a midnight fire broke out in Mayor James Michael Curley’s home, burned out the dining room. Estimated damage: $2,500. Nobody was home (His Honor was still doing six to 18 months for mail fraud).

In Managua, Nicaragua, Dictator and ex-President Anastasio Somoza watched a Nicaragua v. Cuba baseball game start falling to pieces as fighting broke out, restored order singlehanded in a characteristic way. He pulled out his gat and let go a couple of warning blasts in the air.

In Springfield, Ill., Governor Dwight H. Green vetoed a bill to abolish snapshot-taking in nightclubs, tossed the pub-crawling public a little basic advice: if you don’t want to be photographed with the wrong person, go with the right one.

At Murray Bay, Quebec, decorous Senator Robert A. Taft, who would soon tour the West to learn how he looked to them out there as a presidential candidate, took off his coat, set a vacationist’s hat squarely on his head, turned up his trouser cuffs, and did his earnest best (for photographers) to look like a happy-go-lucky golfer.

In Burlington, Vt., Governor Ernest W. Gibson, a city fellow, bravely entered a cow-milking contest, labored before 5,000 spectators, came out third & last. The winner, who milked with one hand, could show a half-pail. The Governor’s two-handed take: two cups.

Nosegays

Hirohito visited the depths of a Japanese coal mine, discovered that the sweating miners, who ordinarily wear nothing but G-strings, had put on shorts in his honor.

U.S. moviegoers got a clap on the back from Jack L Warner of Hollywood’s Warner Brothers. His considered estimate of the fans: “the most adult-minded audiences in motion picture history.” Responsible for this grown-upness: “early mental maturing . . . via the newspapers and radio, as well as the screen.”

Virginia-born Lady Astor, usually handier with vinegar than honey, paid her native land a pretty tribute as she sailed for Britain after another visit home: “Despite the radio, movies, and the selling here—some of them would sell their own grandmother if it would do any good—the people are the soundest, sanest and most generous people in the world.” For Russia, she expressed what almost sounded like sympathy: “Look at Russia’s internal problems. Look what she has to do with that vast country of hers—feeding all those people, and cleaning them.”