King Counseled

Calling in his Cabinet ministers one by one, Yugoslavia's young King Peter sought their views on a matter of considerable importance. He had mentioned it to Franklin Roosevelt last summer; Winston Churchill had approved. But the ministers feared the timing was wrong--with the country in enemy hands. There were other objections. Word leaked out that all but one of the ministers were opposed. In short, 18-year-old King Peter's marriage to Princess Alexandra of Greece* seemed to be postponed a year or two.

International Set

U.S.-born Lady Decies, 71, was worried about manpower. She had skipped back to her native land from her $4-million, 50-room Paris snuggery in 1940 after some 30 years abroad. "How soon do you think the war will be over?" she asked Philadelphia reporters last week. Footmen had always carried her Paris guests from curb to door in sedan chairs, she said, and now--"With one more year of war, there wouldn't be an able-bodied man left in France. . . . God knows who's going to carry my guests. . . ."

U.S.-born Mrs. Jacques Balsan, 65, sometime Duchess of Marlborough, who just beat Lady Decies back to the U.S. in 1940, got back to Manhattan from Saratoga Springs to find she had lost $11,000 worth of jewelry. It later bubbled up in a Saratoga Springs laundry--with some Balsan flatwork.

From Italy onetime Metropolitan Opera Tenor Tito Schipa, 53, arrived suddenly in Lisbon. He explained: "Only those who have experienced the sensation of stage fright can judge how one feels when bombs are exploding just a little way off."

Out of the '80s

Discovered at the Home for Incurables in The Bronx was one of the great Victorian illustrators, 85-year-old Reginald Bathurst Birch, illustrator of Little Lord Fauntleroy. The courtly bon vivant of the '80s, half-blind and broke, had no complaints except against Fauntleroy. It was "about the worst thing that ever happened to me," he said. The lace-and-velvet wrapped little hero's fame had obscured everything else the artist had done. At present, he admitted, "you can say that I'm just a little hors de combat."

New Duties

Signed as a Saturday-night commentator on the Blue Network was ex-OPA-Boss Leon Henderson, veteran Information Please guestpert.

Seated for a year in the Library of Congress' chair of poetry (vacant since 1941) was Southern Agrarian Poet-Critic-Historian (Ode to the Confederate Dead) Allen John Orley Tate. His duties: the care and feeding of the poetry collection.

Ailing

Errol Flynn collapsed at work, was put in a Hollywood hospital for at least a week. "A recurrence of an upper respiratory ailment." Joel Kupperman, radio's little mastermind, turned seven and spotty, called off his birthday party. Measles.

Lionel Barrymore, upset, was in a Santa Monica hospital for a few days. Meat balls & spaghetti.

*Niece of King George II, daughter of the late Alexander, who was fatally poisoned by a monkey bite.

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