People: The Brimming Cup

Alsatian Philosopher-Missionary Albert Schweitzer, on his way back to Europe after the Goethe Bicentennial festival in Aspen, Colo., stopped off at the University of Chicago to pick up an honorary LL.D.

In Särö, Sweden, King Gustaf took a chance in a lottery at a Red Coss bazaar, won two bunches of carrots, a flashy garter and some gingerbread, but missed out on a three-foot spettekaka (Swedish egg and spun-sugar delicacy) which he had set his heart on.

Prince Philip gave some future tars a demonstration of royal prowess. At the Outward Bound Sea School in Aberdovey, Wales, Philip tossed a javelin 109 feet, four feet better than the school “silver star” (i.e., a letter) proficiency standards.

Opera Singer Kirsten Flagstad had to take vinegar with her tea. Manhattan’s Metropolitan, which had snubbed her as a suspected Nazi sympathizer during her first postwar visits to the U.S. in 1947-48, came up with an offer for next season (she turned it down because of previous concert bookings). Meanwhile, in San Francisco, trustees of the War Memorial Opera House canceled her four performances scheduled for this fall, “because of the controversial character of her public appearances elsewhere in the United States.”

Atomic Energy Commission Chairman David E. Lilienthal and General Lucius D. Clay shared the 1949 Freedom Award. Said Freedom House President and onetime Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson: “Each has had to overcome almost insurmountable obstacles, thoughtless opposition and totalitarian pressures.”

Roses & Thorns

Thrice-married Rudy Vallee, longtime crooner who is now a spry, 48-year-old Hollywood character actor, announced that he would try again in the fall, this time with brunette Eleanor Kathleen Norris, 21, who just graduated from the University of California.

In a 461-word telegram, Jersey City’s ex-Boss Frank Hague demanded that the Newark News scrap a series of articles on his life which began this week. “A newspaper such as yours,” he fumed, “. . . should never undertake to publish the story of my life without my express consent … I have served 34 years as the head of the Jersey City government and I dare your newspaper to publish one dishonest act of mine … or point to one breath of scandal or dishonesty in my administration.” The News went right on with the Hague biography.

Mae West sued Manhattan’s Hotel Chatham for $250,000; she wanted compensation, she said, for the broken ankle suffered in a nasty fall on a bath mat last February. Mae claimed the injury has kept her show, Diamond Lil, closed for nearly five months, and hence kept her from getting a $3,000-a-week salary.

Father Divine was having worldly troubles. The Negro-owned picture magazine, Our World, sued him for $105,000, charging that he had made “scandalous, malicious and untrue statements” about the magazine owners after they had published an article exposing the “seams of his cracking kingdom.”

The Working Class

Winston Churchill, with a sportsman’s gesture, kicked in $100 for the defense of an old enemy: German Field Marshal Fritz Erich von Mannstein. The money, along with other contributions, will be used to hire a British lawyer for Mannstein at his war crimes trial Aug. 9. Meanwhile, Churchill spent a few quiet days entertaining Bernard Baruch, an old crony and his recent host in the U.S.

Greta Garbo, off to Europe where she will seriously consider making her first movie in eight years (Balzac’s La Duchesse de Langeais), made a standard Garbo exit. Dressed in black and hidden under a large mushroom-shaped hat, she slipped aboard the Queen Elizabeth, ahead of the crowds, eluded reporters by having the stewardess tell them that Miss Garbo had not yet come aboard.

After stalling for a month, Sir Stafford Cripps gave in to his doctors’ orders, left for a Zurich clinic to take a six-week treatment for an old ailment (colitis).

Army Chief of Staff General Omar N. Bradley, attending top-level military conferences in White Sulphur Springs, took time out for golf with two other big guns: Under Secretary of Defense Stephen T. Early and Air Force Chief of Staff General Hoyt S. Vandenberg.