Monday, Apr. 24, 1939

Back from a 28-State tour designed to cajole more "fine young Westerners" into Yale, handsome President Charles Seymour of Yale University said handsomely: "There is less hard drinking now at Yale than perhaps any "time in the past. Every Sunday night I order a large quantity of beer for the boys who come to visit us in our home . . . what happens? Why, they always drink more milk than beer and we always have beer left over."

While Successmonger Dale Carnegie lectured a rapt Scranton, Pa., audience on how to win friends and influence people, pickpockets toured the auditorium, collected $200.

To Manhattan, after a stormy crossing, the Aquitania brought Countess Barbara Mutton Haugwitz-Reventlow and her son, Lance, whom she now has nine months a year. She has changed in two respects: 1) she is sorry she renounced U. S. citizenship; 2) she has bleached her yellow hair to platinum blonde. Not once on the voyage did she see her fellow passenger, Expatriate Charles Augustus Lindbergh (see p. 16).

In Potsdam, Germany, first great-grandson of ex-Kaiser Wilhelm II, two-month-old son of Prince Louis Ferdinand, 31, and ex-Grand Duchess Kyra of Russia, last week was christened. Name: Louis Ferdinand Friedrich Wilhelm Hubertus Michael Cyril von Hohenzollern. For practical purposes: Wilhelm.

Zoologist and Explorer Roy Chapman Andrews, director of Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History, at 55 published (in the American Magazine) his first short story. Title: Blond Savage. Sample: "Sonia was a real Slavic blonde with a skin like rich cream and absolutely no color except the startling red of her lips. . . . She seemed to plunge her whole body into the sensuous, throbbing rhythm of a barbaric gypsy dance, pouring out her soul in an ecstasy of sound. I saw the real Sonia then, stripped of her mask, passionate, savage, primitive--a woman who would love fiercely and whom hate would burn like a devouring flame . . . it was as though I had surprised her naked."

In Manhattan, British Tennist Henry Wilfred ("Bunny") Austin, a convert to the Oxford Group ("Buchmanism"), started a campaign for "Moral Re-Armament" (see p. 71) of U. S. sportsmen. Buchmanite Austin's tennisy message: "Let us in this new year determine to kill selfishness, to serve others, and line up in this drive for M.R.A. (Moral Re-Armament). The net result would be that we would no longer court disaster, but would match ourselves with the forces of destruction and smash our way through in a real battle for peace."

Amid wars and rumors of wars Cinemactress Loretta Young turned a distracting cheek, suggested the foundation of a Federal Bureau of Public Beauty. Said she: "The turning of, say, 10,000,000 homely women into beauties is a lot more important to the well-being of this country than the building of one medium-sized battleship."

To Washington, D. C., went comely, 21-year-old Katherine Meyer, daughter of Publisher Eugene Meyer, to handle for $25 a week the "Letters to the Editor" department of her father's Post. Said Father Meyer: "If it doesn't work, we'll get rid of her."

At a Children's Welfare League benefit, stary-eyed Brenda Diana Duff Frazier was nominated, for the umpteenth time, "most glamorous and beautiful" of Manhattan's debutantes, styled an "all-American girl." Three days later William Lanahan ("Billy") Livingston, 22-year-old beau of All-American Frazier, signed a movie contract to play the part of a Park Avenue glamor boy.

When Queen Mary went to Stansted, England to open a home for British workingwomen, the children who were to present purses to Her Majesty were anxiously coached. The Queen Mother positively beamed when Master John Kirshaw kowtowed (see cut).

Senator Henry F. Ashurst (Dem., Ariz.), famed for his acoustic orotundity, proclaimed to his colleagues: "There is not a member of this body who does not have the literary qualifications to tell in 15 minutes all the knowledge he has about any subject."

Lyric are the legs of Vera Zorina, beauteous, young, Norwegian-born ballerina (right name: Eva Brigitta Hartwig), newly wed to Choregrapher George Balanchine. Longing also for a lyric tongue, she said last week: "Perhaps many would object to talking like Shakespeare wrote because he was a poet. But that's just what we need--more poetry in our talk."

Stanch Presbyterian James Naismith, who in 1891 invented the game of basketball to keep his Y. M. C. A. boys out of mischief, went to Montreal's Presbyterian Theological College to receive Presbyterian kudos (a D.D.).

For a Doughnut Casino and Doughnut Palace at the New York World's Fair, Artist Winold Reiss, assistant professor of mural painting at New York University, painted murals depicting doughnut-dunkers. Said cheery Professor Reiss: "The intent is serious. Dunking makes for peace and good fellowship."

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