People: People, Dec. 25, 1950

Sights & Sounds

The ladies of the Hollywood Women’s Press Club compared notes on their year’s work, voted Loretta Young and Alan Ladd the “most cooperative stars,” Olivia de Havilland and Robert Mitchum the “least cooperative.”

Cinemactress Yvonne de Carlo, 28, had a few thoughts for reporters who greeted her arrival in London. Said she: “I collect jewelry, furniture and men. It’s so hard to find a husband earning more money than I do. The world is suffering from a shortage of serious bachelors.”

To welcome Clement Attlee back from his White House conferences, the London Daily Mail ran a cartoon of the Prime Minister dressed in cowboy boots, holding a ten-gallon hat and speaking a Fleet Street version of U.S. dialect: “Waal folks, I been away quite a piece, I guess, and it sure is mighty fine to be back here wid youse guys on dis li’l ol’ island.”

The Duchess of Windsor wrapped up and sent off her much-copied 1937 “Wallis Blue” wedding gown to be a part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s costume institute.

For its exhibit of “Wonderful Moments in the New York Theater,” a Manhattan museum had a surprise visitor with a donation: Maude Adams, 78, came in with the “diamond and emerald” crown she wore in A Kiss for Cinderella, her 1917 farewell Broadway performance.

Toil & Trouble

In Brussels, midway through a lecture on the battle of Cassino and the Italian campaign, exiled Polish General Wladyslaw Anders was interrupted by Communist hoodlums who threw eggs and tomatoes, then let loose a few stink bombs and a boxful of white mice in the audience. Eventually police came and carted off about 150 of the hecklers.

In Paris, when Communist Scientist-Professor Frédéric Joliot-Curie walked into the Collège de France auditorium for a lecture on atomic physics, he was greeted with a volley of catcalls, stink bombs and firecrackers. By the time the cops arrived, the explosive students had disappeared.

From his “rest home” in Moscow came word that French Communist Leader Maurice Thorez, partly paralyzed from a stroke two months ago, was able to walk a few steps without help. From Rome it was announced that Italy’s Communist Boss Palmiro Togliatti, recovering from a brain operation, had boarded a train for Moscow and some of the same salubrious Soviet atmosphere.

Meanwhile Wilhelm Pieck, President of the East German Communist government, left Moscow after a month’s “rest cure” for a visit in Warsaw with Polish President Boleslaw Bierut.

The world situation being what it is, Maryland’s lame-duck Senator Millard R. Tydings announced, the family had decided to cancel the elaborate “coming-of-age ball” in Washington’s Mayflower Hotel for their pretty, blonde, 18-year-old daughter Eleanor. Both parents and grandparents, onetime Ambassador and Mrs. Joseph E. Davies, decided it would be better to substitute “a small and simple” dance at the Chevy Chase Club “in keeping with the austerity of the times.”

Separated “too much and too long” by “professional requirements” during their eleven years of marriage, Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor decided that a California divorce was the only way out. Feeling the same way, as of last week: Elizabeth Taylor, after seven months of marriage to Conrad (“Nick”) Hilton Jr.; Betty Mutton and Ted Briskin, who had been trying again after several separations and a divorce.

Cash & Carry

After five weeks on the throne, King Gustaf VI of Sweden asked his parliament for a raise of $38,000 to bring his annual allowance up to $231,000, a middle bracket in the modern monarchical wage scale.*

In Munich, police arrested Merchant Georg Brunner, 50, for illegally owning and trying to peddle a suitcase full of government-confiscated Adolf Hitler memorabilia including: several autographed copies of Mein Kampf, an initialed steel pocket watch, three engraved Hitler-head coins made in honor of his 50th birthday, his World War I army identity card, his 1933 nomination as Chancellor.

In the threemile, six-furlong race at Sandown Park near London, Queen Elizabeth’s five-year-old steeplechaser Manicou romped in by six lengths to win the $1,120 purse. The Queen stepped beaming into the winner’s circle, patted her horse, gave a well-done to jockey and trainer. All in all, she appeared to have recovered from the blow of last fortnight, when her other steeplechaser, Monaveen, broke his leg in a race and had to be destroyed.

A sharp-eyed reporter for the New Statesman and Nation thought it was time to clear up the mystery of Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s “secret” four-day trip to England. Platonist Ben-Gurion was browsing through some rare Greek volumes in an Oxford book shop.

*Highest paid: Britain’s George VI, with $1,148,000. Denmark’s Frederik IX gets $296,671; The Netherlands’ Juliana, $263,158; Greece’s Paul I, $230,000; Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg, $146,000; Norway’s Haakon VII, $139,860.