Show Business: The Law & the Limelight

¶ Boston’s indestructible, scallawaggish ex-Mayor James Michael Curley, 83, who claims in tones of delighted outrage that he is the model of the indestructible, scallawaggish politico in The Last Hurrah, caused hurrahs among movie pressagents and headline writers: he filed for an injunction against the Boston showing of the novel’s movie version. Court hearing has been set for this week, but chances are slim that Boston, or any other place, will be deprived of seeing the Boss’s adventures as portrayed by Spencer Tracy.

¶ Showman Mike Todd’s widow, Elizabeth Taylor, 26, and Mike Jr., 28. Todd’s son by his first marriage, joined in an intricate legal maneuver by which, in effect, they sued themselves for $5,000.000. They asked that amount in damages from 1) two small Jersey corporations that owned and operated the plane in which Todd was killed last March, and 2) Michael Todd Co. (chief stockholders: Liz and Mike), which shared in “maintaining and controlling” the plane. Suing their own company was a fairly standard legal gimmick to provide funds for Liz’s 15-month-old daughter and to lessen the tax bite: damages paid on court judgment could be tax free.

> Herbert J. Yates, 78, president of Republic Pictures, one of the few old-line movie bosses left in control of his own studio, was hit by a stockholder’s suit intended to deprive him of control. In the suit, a New York accountant charged Yates with improper stock deals and with running Republic “as though it were a private business.” Supporting item in the complaint: for years Yates has been casting his wife, aging (37) Vera Ralston, possibly one of the most wooden actresses ever to appear on a screen, in a series of money-losing movies (Lady and the Monster, Belle Le Grand).

> Quiz shows that replace crooked quiz shows may be regarded as fair game for crooks: televiewers from New York, Massachusetts and Virginia have already used pen, paste pot and scissors in an effort to break the bank on Top Dollar, CBS replacement for Dotto (see above). Since the show promised up to $5,000 for dollar bills bearing certain serial numbers, the light-fingered operators altered other serial numbers in order to qualify. All they won was a Secret Service warning that repetition might bring them an alternate prize: up to 15 years in prison and a $5.000 fine.

> In Las Vegas, one of three nightspots that had featured bare-bosomed chorus girls bowed to the Catholic Church’s protest that nude shows were contrary to the moral and divine law (TIME, Aug. 25). But while Beldon Katelman, president of El Rancho Vegas, apologized to church authorities and put his girls back in bras, the Stardust staunchly retained its twelve nudes and the Dunes added four to its original six.