People, May 3, 1937

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

Pennsylvania’s Governor George Howard Earle came down with mumps, was quarantined for 15 days in the executive mansion at Harrisburg with Sons Ralph, 8, and Lawrence, 13. Snorted the Democratic Governor, 46: “And now, I guess, the Republicans will accuse me of being in my second childhood.”

U. S. Ambassador to Russia Joseph Edward Davies slipped on a rug in his Washington apartment, wrenched his back, had Secretary of State Cordell Hull receive for him an honorary Doctorate of Laws from Presbyterian College (Clinton. S. C.).

Novelist Theodore Dreiser, 65, became a tonsillectomy patient at the New York Infirmary for Women & Children because his lady doctor preferred to operate there.

Motormaker Errett Lobban Cord, 42, was discovered bedded in Chicago’s St. Luke’s Hospital for “a rest.”

Rated the underdog. Rose Lolita Long, daughter of the late Louisiana “Kingfish,” won a hot primary contest for the presidency of the Women’s Student Association at Louisiana-State University. Candidate Long’s manager, her 17-year-old brother Russell Billiu was aided by Oscar K. Allen Jr., son of Louisiana’s onetime Governor. Election day all three cut classes, wheedled at the polls, won for Rose by 27 votes.

Black-haired, blue-eyed and 20, pretty Rose is also secretary-treasurer of the junior class, president of her sorority (Delta Delta Delta), gets excellent marks, majors in government like her brother. Sophomore Russell, president of his class since entering, debates on the varsity team, plans to enter law school next fall. Exclaimed President Rose: “Now maybe I can get some sleep.” Next day she began campaigning for class vice president.

Speeding through Harlem, drawling Negro Comic Stepin Fetchit (Lincoln Theodore Perry) had a blowout, smashed his Lincoln sedan into an Elevated pillar, cracked his skull, demolished his car.

The U. S. Labor Department’s Chief Clerk Samuel Gompers, son & namesake of the late American Federation of Labor’s founder, celebrated his soth anniversary in Government service in Washington. Declared he: “If I were a wealthy man, I would want nothing better to occupy my time and mind than this job I’ve got.” After booking steamer reservations to England for himself and three blonde secretaries, Thomas Franklyn (”Tommy”) Manville Jr., playboy asbestos heir, canceled the trip, explaining that he had reneged, not because his estranged fourth wife Marcelle Edwards had reserved passage on the same boat, but because he had been informed “indirectly” that the British Government objected to his presence during the Coronation. “Moral turpitude and things like that,” said he.

A Los Angeles Federal jury convicted Mrs. Violet Wells Norton of fraudulently demanding money from Cinemactor Clark Gable on the ground that he as “Frank Billings” was the father of her illegitimate daughter Gwendoline born in England in 1923. Wrote Mrs. Norton to Gable last March: “You and I understand each other. We could have a swell time.

Nobody in the world would ever know. I would sooner make love to you than harm you, but I get desperate at times.” Gable testified that he was working as a lumberjack in Oregon in 1923, produced a girl friend of that time to prove it. Wailed desperate Mrs. Norton, facing a possible five-year jail term: “There should be blood tests.”