People, Jul. 25, 1955

Names make news. Last week these names made this news:

In Washington, the Defense Department announced that, having completed two correspondence courses in 1953 and successfully made his point quota, Vice President Richard M. Nixon had been promoted to the rank of commander in the Naval Reserve.

As a footnote to his other unsavory accomplishments, Adolf Hitler was revealed by Dr. Oron J. Hale, University of Virginia history professor and former U.S. Commissioner for Bavaria, to have been one of modern history’s most accomplished tax dodgers. According to Hale, whose study in the American Historical Review is based on an analysis of Hitler’s income-tax forms seized in Munich at war’s end, Hitler owed the government some $150,000 in 1934, after his first year as Reich Chancellor. In December 1934, without any formal legal action or the knowledge of the German public, Hitler was excused from his back taxes, after that enjoyed royalties on Mein Kampf and his salary as Chancellor tax free.

Mulling over writing his autobiography at his home in Remsenburg, N.Y., British Humorist P. G. Wodehouse, 73, revealed that he has not visited London since 1939 (he lived in France during World War II), has no intention of returning. Said he: “As Kipling said, ‘You can’t cross old trails.’ England is fascinating, yes, but what breaks my heart is the old great houses being torn down. There’s hardly a Jeeves left in the place.”

In town to address the Imperial Potentate’s Banquet at the annual Shrine Convention in Chicago, Shriner Harry Truman, 71, smilingly donned a fez with the jeweled insignia of his home Ararat Temple in Kansas City, Mo., declared himself “fit as a fiddle,” rode for a time in the seven-hour-long Shriners’ parade, then joined Governor William Stratton in the reviewing stand. Next day he paid a call on Adlai Stevenson, fresh from a hospital bed and a bout with bronchial pneumonia, agreed with him that “the best thing for the country is the Democratic Party.”

At Ascot, in one day, Prince Aly Khan saw his father’s filly Princesse Retta beaten in the Queen Mary Stakes, was kicked in the midriff and knocked flat by his own favorite filly, Martine, under the eyes of Queen Elizabeth, later saw Martine finish out of the money. Hiding behind dark glasses and displaying her customary distaste for photographers, Greta Garbo arrived in Monte Carlo, was photographed strolling the streets just before she boarded Greek Shipping Magnate Aristotle Onassis’ yacht, which was bound for Saudi Arabia, with stops along the way at Capri and Venice.

Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson, 65, confessed to reporters that; he was nursing three or four cracked ribs which he had injured in a 35-m.p.h. spill while aquaplaning with Assistant Defense Secretary W. J. McNeil at Walloon Lake, Mich., on July 4. Recalling that he had broken his hip while ice skating and his shoulder while fox hunting, Wilson concluded ruefully: “I guess I’ll have to act my age.”

Jauntily sporting a multicolored, wide-brimmed straw hat, Bernard M. Baruch limped into the White House to chat with President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles about the Big Four Geneva Conference, later refused to discuss the meeting with reporters but talked freely about his battered hip, which he said he had banged against the edge of his swimming pool at his South Carolina estate. How had it happened? “When you are 85,” responded Bernie Baruch sagely, “don’t try a back flip.”

In Hollywood, oldtime Cinemactress Marion Davies revealed that she has bought the famed Desert Inn in Palm Springs, Calif, for $2,000,000, expects to spend a lot more for renovations and expansions: “I plan to develop it into a miniature Rockefeller Center.”

A linen campaign tent, sleeping shelter of General George Washington when he was in the field, was acquired for $10,000 (part of it donated anonymously to the U.S.) by the National Park Service, which will pitch it in a historical park in Yorktown, Va. The sellers: four Virginia ladies, all heiresses of General Robert E. Lee. In the line of inheritance, the old tent went first to Washington’s widow Martha, later to her grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, and from him to his daughter Mary Anne Custis Lee, wife of the great Confederate commander.

After three shows of his scheduled four-week, $44,000 nightclub engagement at Las Vegas plush Dunes Hotel, TV Comedian Wally (Mr. Peepers) Cox was fired on grounds that he had promised to supply an entirely new act but had come to Las Vegas with no preparation and with material five or six years old. The act had so much “nothing,” according to Co-Owner Al Gottesman, that “people walked out in the middle of it.” When Cox turned up for a fourth show despite his dismissal, the management refused to let him go on, offered to buy up his contract for $5,000. Holding out for his full $44,000, Cox commented dejectedly: “I feel terrible … It was the same act that started me in television.”