People, Sep. 7, 1936

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

In New Haven, Conn., Policeman Michael F. Hally stopped Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt for passing a red light in her automobile. Said she: ”I was watching the street car in front of me.” Said he: “You wasn’t watchin’ nothing.”

To Governor’s Island in New York Harbor as Chief of Staff of the 2nd Corps Area went Colonel Ulysses S. Grant 3rd, grandson of the 18th President.

In Hollywood the personal effects of the late Cinemactor John Gilbert were auctioned. Cinemactress Marlene Dietrich bought his 32 cotton sheets and 35 pillow cases for $300. Leatrice Joy Gilbert, 13, his daughter by his second wife, bought an etching and a makeup box. Virginia Bruce, his fourth wife, bought a Bible.

Refused by Honolulu’s Harbor Board was the request of Doris Duke Cromwell, “Richest Girl in the U. S.,” to bulkhead a Kaalawai Beach cove into a private swimming pool near her proposed $500,000 home. Declared the Board: “This question of great wealth being used for private ends is contrary to the public good.” Annoyed, Mrs. Cromwell threatened to abandon her Hawaiian property, build her home near Palm Beach, Fla., instead.

Ill lay: Magnus Johnson, onetime (1923-25) U. S. Senator from Minnesota, at Litchfield, with pneumonia; Governor Charles Ben Ross of Idaho, Democratic rival of William Edgar Borah for the U. S. Senate, at Boise with neuritis; Senator William Gibbs McAdoo of California, at Santa Barbara with a carbuncle. Snapped he into a radio microphone at his bedside: “The party of Lincoln … is nothing more than a racketeering gang led by millionaire privilege seekers and tax evaders, with a following of inflammatory demagogs and Democratic renegades in the pay of the Liberty League.”

Governor James V. Allred of Texas, himself a pollinosis victim, proclaimed a statewide “Hay Fever Day.” At the Texas Centennial in Dallas, scores of damp-eyed snifflers assembled in an air-conditioned room, sang a plaintive song about rag-weed,* laid plans for permanent organization.

In Manhattan, reaching the retirement age of 70 Negro Matthew Alexander Henson quit his clerkship at the Customs House. An unsung U. S. hero, Henson made eight trips to the Arctic with the late Rear Admiral Robert E. Peary. On April 6, 1909 he and Explorer Peary fell asleep after warming their frozen feet on each other’s stomachs, woke to find they had slumbered over the North Pole. Elated, Negro Henson led three Eskimos in three whooping cheers while Explorer Peary planted the U. S. flag. Reflected he: “That was the happiest day of my life.” Lincoln’s Mayor Charles W. Bryan, thrice (1923-25, 1931-35) Governor of Nebraska, onetime (1924) Democratic candidate for the Vice-Presidency, brother of the late Great Commoner, spied a couple hugging each other as they drove down a Lincoln street, followed them into a beer tavern. At the Mayor’s complaint, the bartender refused to serve beer to the couple. Into another tavern they marched.

Mayor Bryan followed them and again the couple got no beer. Irked, the woman cried: “You are ruining my reputation!” Snapped virtuous Mayor Bryan: “A woman who lets a drunken man hug her for two blocks on a sultry afternoon is putting her reputation at stake.”

*Words by Jimmy Lovell, Dallas cinema reviewer: My heart was yearning but nose was burning. I’m a romantic wheezer with a red hot beezer. Hay fever’s got me, Nobody wants me, That’s why I’m singing the ragweed rag. . . .