Engaged. June Preisser, 21, blonde, acrobatic film starlet (Babes in Arms, Strike Up the Band); and Gar Wood Jr., 23, redhaired, boat-racing son of famed Detroit Speedboatman Gar Wood; in Los Angeles.

Separated. Tallulah Bankhead, 38, currently touring the South in The Little Foxes; and Actor John Emery, 36; after four years of a marriage that was the first for both. Gloomed Actress Bankhead: "We put the blame on that 'old debbil' career.''

Divorced. Barbara ("Poor Little Rich Girl") Hutton, Countess Haugwitz-Reventlow, 28, five-and-dime heiress ($20,000,000); from Danish Count Court Haugwitz-Reventlow, 44, as the decree signed by Denmark's King Christian X became final. Son Lance, 5, will spend most of the year with his mother. His father will spend the next few days in a hospital. He fractured a shoulder skiing at Sun Valley.

Died. Julian Eltinge, 57, last of the skillful female impersonators whom pre-World War I variety audiences adored; of a cerebral hemorrhage; as he was attempting a comeback; in Manhattan. The peer of his profession, the burly Eltinge progressed from vaudeville to the legitimate stage, where he scored lavishly in 1911 in The Fascinating Widow, a play written specially for him and which toured for four years. In this vehicle he played six different roles in rapid succession, wearing Paris gowns that were the envy of his female audience, strapping his 210 Ib. and 46-in. waist to a ghostly corseted 24 in., singing popular tunes in an impeccably pure falsetto.

Died. Pitts Sanborn, 61, music critic for the New York World-Telegram and dean of Manhattan music reviewers, program annotator for the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Society, author of two novels and many books on music, radio commentator and authority on opera; of a heart attack; in Manhattan.

Died. Sherwood Anderson, 64, Ohio businessman who walked down the bed of a river, out of a successful paint business, into a vivid, dreamed world of his own, in describing which (Winesburg, Ohio; Poor White; Dark Laughter) he became for a time (roughly, the '205) one of America's great storytellers; in a Colon, Canal Zone hospital, whither he had been taken ailing with peritonitis from his South America-bound ship (TIME, March 10).

Died. Clara Elizabeth Laughlin, 67, oldtime Midwestern novelist and friend of Poet James Whitcomb Riley, who turned to writing travel books after World War I, published the highly successful So You're Going to -- series; in Chicago.

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