High on the rooftop of his Stamford, Conn. home, hulking, sad-eyed Novelist Sholem Asch (The Nazarene, Three Cities) fought a chimney fire, was overcome by smoke, had to be hauled down by the laundress.

Informed that Nazis have picked Vienna to supplant Paris as world's fashion centre, New York's style-minded Mayor Fiorello H. ("Little Flower") LaGuardia grinned: "I think that indicates that they expect to control everything, if they win. I would refer that matter to Senator Wheeler."

Too busy practicing parachute landings in Pomeranian potato fields, scowling, 35-year-old former World's Champion Max Schmeling turned down the challenge of Vienna's Heinz Lazek to defend his heavyweight championship of the Axis. Declared blonde Anny Ondra, his actress wife: "Max will fight soon--but not in the boxing ring."

Into the Manhattan nightspot ("Gay White Way") of his good friend George (Scandals) White marched retired Nightclubman Jimmy Walker, who has lately been setting an example to the clothing industry (of which he is labor mediator) by working an eight-hour day. Supported on either arm by comely club entertainers, he mused: "There was a time when I would have appreciated this."

Near Bardia, a handful of fugitive Italians disappeared into a coastal cave. A British sergeant called a colonel from his swim, and while the colonel, clad only in his slippers, stood guard with revolver at the entrance, the sergeant wriggled into the cave, shooting. Out crawled the Italians, among them Francesco Argentina, erstwhile commander of Sidi Barrani, eleventh Italian general to be captured in the British attack on Libya. For three days the general went on a hunger strike, then ate, wailed: "For all I care about this desert, you can have it! I myself am a poet."

Tumbling only at the last two gates on the Dollar Mountain slalom course, pert, pear-faced Cinemactress Claudette Colbert skied off with first-place honors in Class A in Sun Valley's first guest slalom race of the season. Her time for the 1-mile track: 1 min., 6 sec.

Threatening legal action if Mrs. Patrick Campbell's executors publish his 125 love letters to the late, great actress before he dies, whiskery old George Bernard Shaw pshawed: "Forty-five years ago, everybody wrote love letters to Mrs. Campbell. I know she thought mine the best of the bunch, though personally I thought those of Burne-Jones more interesting. . . . Before the copyright expires they will, I hope, provide for the education of Mrs. Campbell's great-grandchildren, but they must wait till the old gentlemen who wrote them can no longer make them ridiculous by their white hairs."

Filming a desert forced landing, newlywed Cinemactress Bette Davis hopped as she was supposed to out the plane door, landed as she was not supposed to, derry-down-dilly in a cactus bush. A doctor tweezered out 45 spines.

Possessed of his first U. S. citizenship papers, osseous little Russian Composer Igor Stravinsky proved already to be deep in U. S. musical sociology. Cried eager Igor: "I love swings. It is to the Harlem I go. It is so sympathetic to watch the Negro boys and girls dancing and to watch them eating the long, what is it you call them, frankfurters, no--hot dogs--in the long rolls. It is so sympathetic. I love all kinds of swings."

Ill and half hysterical (as the result, according to her own physician, of taking unprescribed sedatives), beak-nosed, 44-year-old Austro-Hungarian "Princess" Stephanie Hohenlohe-Waldenbourg-Schillingsfuerst was arrested by U. S. immigration officers in a hideaway at Palo Alto, Calif., taken to San Francisco in an ambulance (see cut) to explain why she had not left the U. S. when the extension on her visitor's permit expired last fortnight. Last month, the house guest of Germany's San Francisco consul Fritz Wiedemann, "Steffi" shrilled: "I am anti-Nazi, pro-British, and pro-American. England is my country."

When a bomb tossed by a Korean terrorist blew out his right eye in Shanghai nine years ago, Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura was given a nice new glass one by the Empress Nagako. Last week, going around to see his doctor to have a new eye fitted, big, blunt Ambassador-Designate Nomura played safe and bought five spares. Said he: "I've a hunch my stay in the U. S. this time will be long."

Since 1932, Georgia has been trying to extradite from New Jersey famed escaped Convict Robert Elliott Burns (I Am a Fugitive From a Georgia Chain Gang), now head of a family of three, owner of his own home and operator of his own tax-accounting business in Newark. Last week Georgia's Governor Eugene Talmadge, back in office, pressed the claim again on New Jersey's new Governor Charles Edison, found him obdurate too.

Out of Tokyo's Imperial Palace, gravely and in holiday best, toddled Emperor Hirohito's second son, His Imperial Highness Masahito Yoshi-no-Miya ("Prince of Genuine Righteousness"), 5, bound for a visit with the grandson of Japan's late, great statesman, Prince Hirobumi Ito.

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