Entertainers

Jack Benny, tanned and plumper, got back to Manhattan from his ten-week U.S.O. tour of Africa, the Middle East and Italy, where his troupe was the first show to land on the European mainland. Said he: "In Iran, according to the current films, Shirley Temple hasn't been born yet, and Francis X. Bushman has just won the popularity contest." Two days later arrived:

Al Jolson, looking like "Bombo" in a Senegalese fez. Already a veteran of U.S.O. tours in Alaska, the Pacific, the Caribbean, he was now back from Africa and Sicily. He too plumped for newer films for the troops, reported: "They don't want Shakespeare. They're kids, they're babies--they want light stuff, but no legitimate ham."

Geraldine Farrar, now 61 and long the buxom mistress of a rural estate in Connecticut, appeared in her Red Cross uniform at a war bond rally in Ridgefield, auctioned off a little pig.

Eva Tanguay, at 65, was back in the news in Los Angeles. The arm-throwing, hair-shaking shouter, whose I Don't Care made her one of vaudeville's biggest stars in her youth, had periodically been reported near death during the last ten years. Last week she charged that Elza Schallert, a writer at work on her biography, refused to give back her autobiographical notes. Eva wanted the notes or $75,000.

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