People, Apr. 25, 1938

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

To the tiny island of St. Gildas, off the northern coast of Brittany, went Colonel Charles Augustus Lindbergh once again to visit and collaborate with his great & good friend, Author-Scientist Alexis Carrel (Man, The Unknown). Few days later it became known that Colonel Lindbergh had purchased the nearby island of Illiec, complete with chateau.

“For keeping his feet on the ground,” Alfred Mossman Landon, Franklin Roosevelt’s 1936 Presidential opponent, received Judge Magazine’s “High Hat” award. Cracked he: “I am not as famous as a humorist as some others who have received this award*—particularly the author of that well-known gag, ‘We are on our way back because we planned it that way.’ ” Few days later, when Citizen Landon was asked what he thought of Author

Roosevelt’s radioration last week (see p. 10), he replied: “The speech sounded good if you had heard it for the first time.”

In Lubbock, Tex., Mrs. May Lane Post bought two bicycles, ordered them shipped to Alaska to the two Eskimos who discovered the bodies of her husband, Flyer Wiley Post, and Will Rogers after their fatal crash in 1935.

An hour’s train ride from Trondheim, in central Norway, is Hell, a tiny hamlet (pop. 1,465) which thrives on U. S. excursionists who have fun sending home Hell-marked postcards.† Situated on hilly ground, Hell (the Norwegian word for luck or slope) maintains two churches but no fire department, has cool summers, bitterly cold winters, sometimes freezes over completely. Last week mild-mannered, blue-eyed Lorentz Stenvig, mayor of Hell, arrived in Manhattan as the guest of publicity-wise Robert (“Believe It or Not”) Ripley, gave the press a chance to make free use of naughty expressions. Sample: chided by Host Ripley for bringing Manhattan a heat wave, Mayor Stenvig replied: “Why, it’s hotter than Hell in New York.”

During the Ethiopian War Thomas Joseph Pendergast, Democratic dictator of Kansas City, was said to have used influence in Washington to quash the proposed U. S. embargo on oil to Italy. Last week Italian Vice Consul Alessandro Savorgnan of St. Louis draped around Dictator Pendergast’s pudgy neck the insignia of the Order of Commander of the Crown of Italy.

Sporting a new hat (see cut), Cinemactress Mae West arrived in Manhattan for a series of personal appearances in the East. Said she: “Don’t let this halo hat deceive you, boys. I just wear it crossing State lines.”

Orchestra Leader Vincent Lopez took out a copyright on his new, streamlined version of The Star-Spangled Banner, became the only person to hold a copyright on the U. S. national anthem.

Fifty-eight-year-old Jacob Epstein, radical, Manhattan-born British sculptor whose monolithic works have created periodic storms among England’s art critics, was awarded his first honorary degree (LL. D.), by Scotland’s Aberdeen University. Said Aberdeen in honoring him: “The works of Mr. Epstein have sometimes evoked a lively criticism, which has died away as the critics themselves came to learn or came to be ignored.”

*Among them: George M. Cohan, Thomas E. Dewey, Howard Hughes, Faik Konitza, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

† Not to be confused with Hellin, Spain.