People: Family Circles

In Hong Kong, pretty Nancy Nyi, fortyish, filed a paternity suit against former Nationalist China Premier Sun Fo. Charging that he fathered her two teen-aged daughters, she asked $1.50 a week maintenance for the younger one.

Gertrude (“Gorgeous Gussie”) Moran, 26, U.S. tennis star whose lace-trimmed underthings stole the show at Wimbledon last year, announced her engagement in New Delhi, India to Calcutta Businessman Anthony Davenport, 28, son of British Economist Nicholas Davenport. Said her prospective father-in-law in London: “All I know is that she is a very good tennis player and there was a lot of fuss about her panties.” Said her mother, Mrs. Emma Moran, in Santa Monica, Calif.: “Oh, Gertrude’s been engaged several times before.”

The forthcoming wedding of David Michael Mountbatten, Marquess of Milford Haven, and Mrs. Romaine Dahlgren Pierce Simpson, scheduled for Feb. 4 in Washington, D.C., already seemed to be suffering in-law trouble. The prospective groom’s mother, Marchioness of Milford Haven, visited the capital to take part in the wedding arrangements, then departed abruptly for England, without explanation, aboard the S.S. America. Mrs. Clark Mcllwaine, mother of the bride-elect, was reported displeased with the determination of Milford Haven and her divorcee daughter to invite a lot of stage and film people to the nuptials. Displeasing to almost everyone concerned was the report that the $35,000-a-year alimony paid to Mrs. Simpson by her ex-husband would be cut to $10,000-a-year the moment she says “I do” to the young cousin of King George VI.

Jet Pilot Felix Anthony (“Doc”) Blanchard, onetime All-America football great (Army, 1945-46), posed briefly in San Antonio with his 31-month-old son, Felix Anthony Blanchard III, then winged off to San Francisco for a new Air Force assignment in Alaska.

Thoughts & Afterthoughts

Father Divine told his Harlem flock that he personally caused New York’s water shortage because the city did not love him: “If you do not love me and keep my commandments I will curse your going out and I will curse your coming in and I will curse you in your storehouses and in your baskets! I said, I will dry up your rivers and I will dry up your streams! This water shortage in New York City has been just a slight sketch and a reflection of what I will do … Unless they [New York City] repent, they shall in like manner perish as Sodom and as Gomorrah.”

Train Robber Jesse James was causing almost as much trouble dead as he did alive. His son, Jesse E. James, of Los Angeles, went to court in Missouri to fight the suit of a 102-year-old Oklahoman, J. Frank Dalton, who has asked the courts to declare him the real Jesse James. The bandit’s son declared that Dalton was an impostor. Dalton’s version, which he has been repeating to anyone who would listen all around the U.S.: “History is incorrect in its report that I died in St. Joseph, Mo. on the third of April, 1882, at the gun of Bob Ford. The unfortunate victim of the shooting on that date was Charlie Bigelow, who physically resembled me in many respects.”

New York City’s newlywed Mayor William O’Dwyer was back in Florida for some more rest to fight the virus infection that laid him low shortly after his reelection last November. In a long-distance telephone call from Key Largo to cronies in Manhattan’s City Hall, he denied that he planned to resign because of poor health. Eleanor Roosevelt and Sister Kenny were named by a Gallup poll as the two women most admired by the U.S. public. Others, in order of finish: Clare Boothe Luce, Helen Keller, Madame Chiang Kaishek, Margaret Truman.

On with the Show

Circus Mogul Henry Ringling (“Bud”) North was fed up. Thieves stole two coconut palm trees from his property at Bird Key, Ringling Islands, Sarasota, Fla., returned next day and stole three more.

In Portland, Ore., 1,000 theatergoers waited until 12:30 a.m. for the curtain to go up on Inside U.S.A., starring Beatrice Lillie, after the theatrical company, aboard a train from Los Angeles, was snowbound in the Cascade Mountains. The weary, determined players performed for the weary, determined audience until the final curtain rang down at 3:10 a.m.

“There was so much music in America I was revolted,” said Pianist Hepzibah Menuhin, sister of Violinist Yehudi Menuhin, on her way back home to Australia after visiting California. “Music is an intruder on every form of life. It’s even in grocery stores and beauticians’. And the most repulsive thing about it is that no one is listening to it.”

A 3O-lb. sandbag used as a counterweight accidentally crashed at the feet of Ethel Waters, star of The Member of the Wedding, as she took her curtain call in a Broadway theater. Unfazed, even though the weight had missed her by inches, she quoted a line from the hymn she sings in the play: “His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me.”

Dorothy (Road to Morocco) Lamour was off to Houston with her husband, Adman Bill Howard, for a personal-appearance date, after posing for a picture in Hollywood with her three-month-old son, Richard Thomson Howard. Said Dotty of the baby and his older brother, John, 4: “Now that I have two boys I can do my own ‘Road’ pictures at home. That house, believe me, is as crazy as a ‘Road’ picture with the two kids yelling at once.”