Nicky's Nick

In pursuing his and Hollywood's newfound enthusiasm for history, bouncing little Producer Darryl Zanuck of Twentieth Century-Fox has landed on some sensitive toes: descendants of Canal Builder Ferdinand de Lesseps (whose wives and children were not accounted for in Suez), Jesse James, admirers of Alexander Graham Bell. Last month cinemaddicts who saw Producer Zanuck's Rose of Washington Square, in which Alice Faye redeems her swindler husband, Tyrone Power, by singing My Man from a Ziegfeld stage, wondered whether his foot had not slipped again (TIME, May 15). For My Man was introduced in 1920 by Ziegfeld Star Fannie Brice, when her second husband, Nicky Arnstein, was a fugitive on a swindling charge. After seeing Rose of Washington Square, Fannie Brice saw her lawyer. Last week from the owner of a sorer toe came a loud squeal.

Climax of Rose of Washington Square shows Actor Power, melted by My Man, turning himself in to plead guilty to a somewhat foggy charge, take a five-year prison sentence. Nicky Arnstein (real name: Jules W. Arndt Stein) turned himself in after his wife sang the song, was convicted of conspiracy to carry stolen securities into the District of Columbia, sentenced to two years in Leavenworth. After leaving prison the second time (he had been sent to Sing Sing for a securities deal in 1912), dapper Jules W. Arndt Stein tried the advertising business in Manhattan, was divorced, remarried, ended up in a Los Angeles air-conditioning firm. Last week he filed suit against Producer Zanuck, Actor Power, et aL, seeking an injunction against further showings of Rose of Washington Square, $250,000 damages. Mr. Arndt Stein huffed .hat Actor Power portrayed him not only as a coward, weakling and swindler, but as a faithless husband to boot. If Nicky gets his nick, it will be the deepest cut in Hollywood's hide since Russian Princess [rina Alexandrovna Youssoupov, whose Brother helped murder Rasputin, got an estimated $750,000 from M-G-M because a "Princess Natasha" was shown being assaulted by the Mad Monk in Rasputin and the Empress six years ago.

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