Glory,Glory

Finally recognized by the museum world as prizeworthy was 53-year-old Painter Thomas Hart Benton, the sulfurous strong boy from Neosho, Mo. (The famed Gallery-giber once described the average museum as "a graveyard run by a pretty boy with delicate wrists and a swing in his gait.") Now he won the Carol H. Beck Medal for his Aaron in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts annual show. Benton commented that it was "the first painting prize I ever won," conceded that he had been honored by architects but emphasized that "this is the only time my distinguished painter friends have recognized my work. At least in a nice way." Same day came more typical Bentoniana from Missouri: State Representative Ralph Erdwin declared that the likeness of malodorous ex-Boss Tom Pendergast ought to be erased from a Benton mural in the State capitol. "It would be one hell of a job to erase Pendergast," commented the muralist. "I put him up there. Let someone else take him down."

Ondatra Zibethicus Fricassee

"It is a delicious meat," claimed Louisiana's Congressman James Domengeaux, "and the only reason the outside world hasn't known about it is that we were keeping it for ourselves. But now with the war and the meat shortage we are willing to share this tasty dish." In a Capitol dining room, for the war effort and the benefit of Louisiana trappers, Congressman Domengeaux shared it with Cabinet members and fellow Congressmen. The dish: fricasseed muskrat, received gingerly at first by the guests. A news photographer recorded the effect of muskrat on enthusiast Domengeaux, cautious Vice President Henry Agard Wallace, brooding Speaker Sam Rayburn.

Errands

The flash bulbs caught Queen Elizabeth's younger brother, the Hon. David Bowes-Lyon, who has been in the U.S. almost a year and has been phenomenally unpublicized. As chief of the British Political Warfare Mission here he runs British propaganda, but last week he broke into Manhattan news columns simply as the man who gave away the bride (Winifred Tollenaar) at a society wedding.

More frequently in the news but less well known: Lee Ya-ching, slender aviatrix who was boosting United China Relief last week in Manhattan. Daughter of a wealthy Hong Kong brick manufacturer, she used to teach at the Shanghai Municipal Air School, raised money in China for the Army by barnstorming all over the country as an acrobat, was the first Chinese to make the Caterpillar Club (she was thrown out of a stunting plane over San Francisco Bay). Known to the Japanese as the Red Devil of China, she is a teetotaler, a nonsmoker, feels that men are "just to look at," thinks eating is a waste of effort--wishes all food came in capsules.

Into It

To Wyoming's Fort Warren for training as a captain in the Army Quartermaster Corps: 55-year-old Jack Holt, after 28 years of hairbreadth-harrying in Hollywood.

Sworn into the Navy in Louisville as an apprentice seaman: the Brooklyn Dodgers' crack shortstop, Harold ("Pee-wee") Reese. His draft status unsettled: the Dodgers' reserve crack shortstop, Manager Leo ("The Lip") Durocher.

Commissioned a lieutenant in the Navy in Manhattan: the New York Sun's

Richard Lockridge, 44, fourth top-flight dramacritic to go off to the wars. The others: the Times's Brooks Atkinson, now a correspondent in China; the World' Telegram's John Mason Brown, U.S.N.R. lieutenant stationed in London; the Herald Tribune's Richard Watts Jr., OWI chief in Belfast.

New shopworker at the American Export Lines instrument plant at LaGuardia Field was 1926's world-famed Channel Swimmer Gertrude ("Trudy") Ederle. Out of the swim most of the time since she gave up teaching at pools in San Juan a year and a half ago, she decided to become an aircraft worker after her kid brother joined the Army Air Forces.

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