Benefactor of Babes

Radio's quest for a missing "Babe" ended last week in Toronto when a United church, three ex-baby-burlesqueens and the indignant relatives of a plumber named William John Wright agreed out of court to split his $12,500 estate. The case was the screwiest yet aired by the CBS Court of Missing Heirs, which on a coast-to-coast hookup has unearthed claimants to over $400,000.

Plumber Wright wanted a girl named Wallie ("Babe") Coughlin to inherit his legacy. But all he knew about her was that he had seen her in 1918 at the age of five, toddling around the stage of a burlesque house in Fort Wayne, Ind. To find her, ads were run in Variety and Billboard. But not until the Court of Missing Heirs took the matter in hand were 240 potential Babes unearthed, of whom only three felt sure enough of their identity to head for Canada to claim the legacy.

In a Toronto court last week, the three Babes gathered, together with representatives of Toronto's Sherbourne United Church, which was to get the goodies if the Babe failed to show up, and Plumber Wright's cousin Charles Barkworth, who was out to break the will. Cousin Charles and supporters told strange tales of Plumber Wright: how he kept a pistol on his table while he ate, how he deceived small children into thinking moth balls were candy, how he threatened to water his father's corpse when his mother suggested watering the lilies around the old man's bier.

To courtly Justice J. Keiller MacKay, all this didn't add up to lunacy. Wearying of the proceedings, he suggested that claimants could make more if they could split the estate than they would by fighting on. In the settlement the church took 40%, the relatives 12 1/2%; the three Babes (none of whom answered to the name Wallie Coughlin) split the other 47 1/2%.

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