People: People, Jun. 7, 1948

The Inside Dope

General Lucius D. Clay, on the Is-Hitler-Alive topic: “Even if he were alive, he couldn’t be any more dead than he is.”

Mrs. Henry Agard Wallace, on Henry: “One thing that does arouse me is the charge that my husband is proCommunist. He’s no more a Communist than I am—and I certainly know that I’m not.”*

Princess Elizabeth, on juvenile delinquency: “It is so often conditions at home that are responsible. I myself have been extremely lucky in this respect . . .”

Actress Cornelia Otis Skinner, on Topic A: “Most women are frustrated in their love lives, so they throw all their energies into women’s clubs . . . Let’s not kid ourselves, girls. It isn’t much fun trying to get along without men.”

Week-Ending Columnist Hedda Hopper, on encountering lei-bearing greeters at Honolulu’s airfield: “Gadzooks, what a reception for an old goat!”

The Literary Life

Eugene O’Neill found his Mourning Becomes Electra still a live issue after 17 years: the city fathers of Leipzig (in the Russian zone) closed it because it was “reactionary . . . Western decadence.”

Henry L. Mencken was very nearly a dead issue, in Baltimore. The daughter of his colored cook fatally stabbed her mother with-an ice pick and then set out for the Menckens’. Presently Mencken’s brother August looked out his window and saw the daughter approaching, a bottle in each hand; he talked to her through,, the window, at the same time dialed police, who came on the double, nabbed her, and packed her off to a sanitarium. Mencken slept through everything.

Joseph B. Keenan, chief prosecutor in the Japanese war-crime trials, noted happily that he was a much more popular author in Japan than ex-Premier Hideki Tojo, the No. 1 defendant. The published text of Tojo’s defense affidavit had sold 5,000 copies, the Japanese version of Keenan’s summation, 50,000.

Hearts & Thistles

With love, it was all sunshine-&-shadows.

The Irving Berlins’ daughter Mary Ellin—whose maternal grandfather was Postal Telegraph Magnate Clarence Mac-kay—became engaged to Dennis Sheedy Burden, a socialite with a Newport background. This moved Manhattan’s earthy

Daily News to the season’s most snobbish editorial, which exclaimed through eight paragraphs how wonderfully American it was that immigrants’ families could marry into socialites’ families.

Robert Maynard Hutchins, 49, chancellor of the University of Chicago, was finally (after almost 27 years of marriage, three daughters) sued for divorce by wife Maude, 45, who has been living in the chancellor’s official residence the past year while the chancellor camped out in a hotel. Mrs. Hutchins charged desertion.

Leo Gorcey, side-of-the-mouth “Dead End Kid” of stage & screen, had gat trouble with his estranged wife Evalene. One dark night at home in suburban Los Angeles, he heard people coming in without asking, so he grabbed his rod quick and blazed away. It was just Evalene and a couple of detectives having a little peek. Nobody got hit, but Leo got arrested on a gun charge and faced trial this week.

Flesh & Blood

Marie-Jose, Italy’s last Queen (for 26 days in 1946), went to Switzerland from Portugal for eye-doctoring. Paraly sis of the optic nerve threatened her with blindness at 41.

Evangelist Billy Sunday’s 79-year-old widow, “Ma,” went to Jamestown, N.Y., for a Gospel Missions convention, was hospitalized with a heart ailment.

Walter P. Reuther’s physician an nounced that the U.A.W. chief, whose arm was nearly blasted off last April,* had a very good chance of regaining a “nearly 100% perfect arm.” Bouquets In London, Queen Mary — in powder blue as usual — got fan mail, gun salutes, the cheers of crowds, a little cake with icing, and a toast from her family and friends at lunch, on her 81st birthday.

In Manhattan, Inside Dopester Drew Pearson got a silver medal as Father of the Year (for his food-for-Europe campaign) from 1943’s Father of the Year, Dwight Eisenhower. Pearson also got a terse tut for slipping into the ceremony an Eisenhower-for-President plug. The general’s view: “I deplore it.” In Washington, the Un-American Ac tivities Committee handed Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, chairman, a memento of the committee’s tenth anniversary: ten red roses.

In San Jose, Calif., British-born Lilian Augusta Fontaine, mother of Actresses Olivia de Havilland (who became a citizen in 1941) and Joan Fontaine (who became a citizen in 1943), was awarded citizenship after 29 years in the U.S.

In Tampa, Fla., the University of Tampa decided to reward Hollywood Hero Tyrone Power with an honorary doctorate of humanities.

In Manhattan, Master Tapster Bill Robinson got a 70th-birthday cake (see cut), a Broadway blowout, a cruise party up the Hudson, a watch, and plaster casts of his feet, which he examined and pronounced authentic (“Got the bunions and all”). In Tokyo, General Douglas MacArthur gave the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post an autographed picture of himself.

The Law

Joseph Untermeyer, 19, adopted son of relentless Punster* and Anthologist Louis, was cleared of illegal possession of firearms. Arrested a month ago in a Manhattan loft building that held a small arsenal, he explained that he was just wrapping bundles of food and clothing for Palestine, didn’t know anything about the arms. The court believed him.

Nazi Financial Wizard Hjalmar Schaicht, in the fourth year of an eightyear prison term, lost a fight to spring himself on a habeas corpus writ.

Willy Messerschmitt, who built airplanes for the Nazis but claims he never really liked the Nazis, half-convinced an Augsburg denazification court of his dislike, got off with a fine of 2,000 marks as a Nazi “follower”—the fourth and lowest grade offender.

In Beverly Hills, Calif., radio’s quiz-witted Phil Baker got a $200 fine, a go-day sentence (suspended) and court orders to mount the water wagon for a year, after he was nabbed at the wheel of a weaving car.

Lucky Luciano, deported super-pimp of Manhattan, was having cop trouble again. Palermo (Sicily) police picked him up and quizzed him for three days about his Maffia connections. Then they let him go again till next time.

* For a professional view of Wallace’s New Party line, see NATIONAL AFFAIRS. *By a gunman still not caught. * Sample punishment (to two donkeys): Danke schon, Don Quixote.