Short Circuit

Months of jungle misery had made G.I.s in the China-Burma-India Theater a sensitive audience. Mere days of it also had their effect on some already sensitive big-name cinema stars. By last week the resulting strain was enough to rupture the CBI Theater's U.S.O. circuit, send sparks flying from New Delhi to Hollywood.

First sign of trouble came fortnight ago when Roundup, CBI's official, irrepressible G.I. weekly, complained that all too many soldiers were being disappointed by needlessly broken entertainment schedules. Citing cases, Roundup said that Joel McCrea, "large, husky, over-six-foot male," called off his announced 60-day tour in Cairo when he heard that "CBI is tough." Paulette Goddard left the theater six days early when she "reportedly was taken ill." Pledged to 120 days on the CBI circuit, Joe E. Brown "suddenly remembered a previous engagement in North Africa . . . decamped after 37."

The final straw was added, said Roundup, when Ann Sheridan came home from a sharply curtailed visit, saying she didn't ever want to go back. Her reason: "It's too rough."

Prior Commitments, Enceinte Wives. Declaring that soldiers have a right to grumble "when entertainers show up with hammy routines that would get yawns at a free-dish matinee in Springfield, Ohio, and then dog it after a month or six weeks," Roundup's editors did so:

"These selfless patriots who, incidentally, are well fed, clothed, housed, transported and paid by the Army and the U.S.O., discover in a couple of weeks that CBI is hot, wet, full of mosquitoes and they suddenly develop prior commitments, serious ailments, enceinte wives . . . spend, in the case of Sheridan . . . & Co., a total of 35 days out of a promised minimum 60, pick up a little money and a lot of publicity and sneak back to the United States to recuperate from the whole horrible ordeal."

Hollywood Howl. When the complaint reached the U.S. last week, the indignant stars set up a howl of their own. Actress Goddard insisted that she had "played all but three days when I was ordered to bed by the Army physician." Comedian Brown, who has an outstanding record of devotion to soldier entertainment and whose soldier son was killed in a plane crash, angrily retorted that he "did all a 53-year-old man could do." The Hollywood Victory Committee blamed broken promises on Army snags, added that Ann Sheridan and Joel McCrea had both been , held up by lack of transportation.

Taking up for herself, Actress Sheridan went even farther, offered to "fight boy fashion, no holds barred," with anybody who thought she had dogged it. In a letter to Roundup's editor, she claimed that her tour was made at considerable personal sacrifice, added: "I'm wondering if your wife, sweetheart or sister has bucket-seated her way 60,000 miles . . . at better than a thousand miles a day, playing even two bad shows, eating C-or K-rations more often than hot groceries, much of it standing up, and then when it's littler girl's-room time, go down to the men's toilet and wait till it's cleared so that the girl troupers may use it.

"And by the way," she added, "how long has it been since you left that swivel editor's chair to ride the Hump?"

At week's end no one could say which side had more reason to squawk. But one thing was certain: the overseas entertainment program was not always entertaining in the manner the U.S.O. had planned.

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