Society

In Manhattan, socialites hung themselves with lamb chops, mushrooms, alarm clocks, lobsters, hot water bottles and sausages and gathered in a swank night club to dance. They were dressed as their own dreams to do honor to Surrealist Painter Salvador Dali who paints realistic pictures of horrid fantasies and was about to sail for Europe after a Manhattan exhibition (TIME, Nov. 26). On the stairway stood a bathtub clotted with mud, oysters and, later, cigaret butts. Dali's handsome wife wore a dress of transparent red paper, a headpiece decorated with lobsters and a doll's head, representing necrophilia, which Mme Dali herself explained as "excessive fondness for dead bodies." Artist Dali wore a glass case on his chest containing a brassiere. Some of the men wore tail coats, no trousers. One woman came naked from the waist up, was hastily removed. Wrote society reporters: "It was all cockeyed, terribly amusing and just about the most sophisticated party of the year." Said Mme Dali: "It was an experiment to see how far the American people would respond to a chance to express their own dreams. Only a dozen or two have actually expressed themselves."

Mad as a hornet last week because she had not thought of the dream party was Professional Hostess Elsa Maxwell whose living comes from giving unimaginative socialites just such tips on how to have fun. A fat, nervous spinster whose business slogan is "It's too, too divine!" she went from San Francisco to Europe to teach boom-time U. S. millionaires and miscellaneous princelings how to have Murder Parties, Come-As-You-Were-When-the-Autobus-Called Parties, Scavenger Parties, Come-As-Somebody-Else Parties, Come-As-Your-Opposite-Parties, Come-As-the-Person-You-Like-Best Parties. Elsa Maxwell gave them, somebody else paid for them. After the crash, she returned to Manhattan via Hollywood, to cash in on her amazing reputation. Last week she had a job organizing the floor show of a Manhattan night club. Same day as the dream party, she organized a publicity stunt for the night club out of the latest fad of European socialites: levitation.

With photographers on hand, Miss Maxwell permitted four dancers (not debutantes) to put their forefingers under her thighs and armpits. All five breathed together, the girls lifted and Miss Maxwell levitated nervously. Back in her chair, she shrilled: "I think it mad fun, utterly mad! I shall introduce it at my party for Noel Coward. . . . Why not toss the subject into the air and then run? It's a splendid way to snub an unwelcome guest. . . . Do it again!"

Initials

In Washington, scary Senators protested violently when they saw on Negro waiters in the U. S. Senate Restaurant the collar initials, U. S. S. R.

Clams

In Seattle Clam Grower J. C. Carroll sued Puget Sound Navigation Co. on the ground that its steamer, Chippewa Chase, disturbed his clams.

Slide

In Peoria, Ill., Fireman Joe Turner was on the second floor of the firehouse when he heard the alarm. He leaped for the pole, started sliding, ignited matches in his breast pocket, burned his chest, was prompted to let go. The drop broke both legs. It was a false alarm.

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