Best-Sellers

Out of the night came Richard Krebs ("Jan Valtin"), of his autobiographical chiller admitted: "I added the experiences of some other people to make the book as effective as possible." Armenian Dikran Kouyoumdjian (Michael Arlen), glossy darling of the '20s (The Green Hat), reached Manhattan by freighter from Britain, en route to Hollywood. Latest report on the other Armenian, William Saroyan: he plans to start a saloon modeled on his play, The Time of Your Life, on Manhattan's fly-blown Third Avenue.

Fortunes of Fortunes

"Liz" Whitney, John Hay Whitney's exwife, and Gwladys Hopkins Whitney, ex of Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, helped form a lobby in Washington against a proposal to tax ex-wives for the alimony they get and let ex-husbands deduct the alimony they pay. Dropped once, the measure is due to reappear. Camel-lipped Character George Arliss appeared before the Lord Mayor of London, was fined $18,000 for not registering with the Bank of England some $52,000 worth of U.S. and Canadian securities. The onetime portrayer of money-wizard Rothschild said he was an innocent in money matters. The Lord Mayor disagreed. On parole from the pen where he had been sent for hornswoggling Philippine Railway investors, once-affluent William Buckner said he was busted, that his wife Adelaide Moffett, blue-blooded songstress, is paying their $800-a-month household bills, A plea of Mae West's forgotten husband Frank Wallace for $1,000-a-month temporary support was thrown out of court after Mae said she had an overdrawn bank account, a purse with less than $50 in it, receipts for jewels she had sold. Later, when chorus girls offered to help, Mae said: "I am only down to my last few millions. . . . If the girls want to ... they could give me a nice new scissors to clip my coupons."

The Maritime Commission's Emory Scott Land was still speaking when the S.S. Patrick Henry started down the ways in Baltimore. Surprised Mrs. Henry Agard Wallace just managed to whack the prow with a bottle before the ship was out of reach. One explanation offered: Maryland's rambling Senator George Radcliffe had talked so long he threw the schedule out of whack.

Fortunes of War

Prime Minister Winston Churchill's youngest daughter, Mary Churchill, 18, enrolled as a private in the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service (WATS), began her anti-aircraft training. Cinemactor David Niven was on leave from his British regiment to make a picture with Leslie Howard about Reginald Joseph Mitchell, designer of the Spitfire. New recruits in the U.S. Naval Reserve : Wendell Willkie's son, Philip, and Dodger Boss Lorry MacPhail's son, William. Cleveland discovered that Pitcher Bob Feller, 22, who had passed his physical examination for the draft, had been taking flying lessons for three weeks. Vichy announced that the centennial of World War I Premier Georges Clemenceau's birth (Sept. 28, 1841) would be ignored. Same day the burial place chosen by Marshal Henri Philippe Petain was announced: the tomb at Douaumont where Verdun's unknown war dead lie.

Hourglass

Torchsinger Helen Morgan, piano-sitting favorite of the dry days, had her spleen removed, lay gravely ill in a Chicago hospital. Evelyn Nesbit, stage beauty over whom Harry K. Thaw murdered Stanford White in 1906, turned up in a newspaper ad plugging a face-lifting process. Plugging for fat removal in an ad in the same paper appeared oldtime Shimmy Queen Gilda Gray. Los Angeles police who made a raid on an elaborate, white-tie gambling joint discovered that it was the onetime home of Billy Sunday, the late devil-fighting evangelist.

In Tarrytown, N.Y., across the road from the Duchesse de Talleyrand (Anna Gould), favorite followers and guests of Father Divine sat down with the boss to do a little house-warming in their newest 21-room "heaven." They started eating at 2 p.m., ate their way through 161 separate dishes (including 36 kinds of meat, 15 desserts), wiped their chins at 6.

Silly Symphony

A Hollywood studio announced that the kissing record set by George Brent and Ann Sheridan (56.2 seconds) had finally been broken by Regis Toomey and Jane Wyman (3 min. 5 sec.). A citizens' committee of Lilypons, Md., appointed Lily Pons honorary Mayor. (The town was named in honor of the opera singer nine years ago.) "I'm never going to get behind that phony mustache again," declared Julius ("Groucho") Marx. "The mustache is out for good." The New York Times published an editorial in protest.

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