The Cheerful Outlook

Harry Hopkins, on a diplomat's day off during his mission to Moscow for President Truman (see U.S. AT WAR), visited the Bolshoi Theater Ballet school and ventured an esthetic judgment: "American women are pretty but Russian women are really beautiful."

Congressman James Michael Curley, now 70, but reluctant as ever to leave the public payroll, announced that he would run for Mayor of Boston, a job he has held three times. Said he: "With due moderation, barring accidents, [I] should live for at least 25 years longer to please my friends and confound rumor mongers." It was no rumor that last year he finished paying off a $42,629 judgment for a rake-off from the last time (1930-1933) he was mayor.

Edward Kennedy, quick-triggered Associated Pressman who jumped the gun on the German surrender, arrived in Manhattan on an Army transport and in the Army's doghouse, declared: "I would do it again. The war was over. . . . The people had a right to know."

Gertrude Stein, who wrote out the war in occupied France, wrote in the New York Times Magazine: "And now I have been asked are the young men of this war after the war is over, are they going to be sad young men. No, I do not think so. And I do not think so for a most excellent reason, they are sad young men already, if you are sad young men then there is a fair chance that life will begin at 30 instead of ending at 30 and I think more or less that is what is going to happen to this generation."

Bishop Eivind Berggrav, Primate of the Norwegian State Lutheran Church, who talked back to Himmler and refused to become a clerical quisling, recalled his 1941 anti-Nazi stand and the five years' imprisonment it cost him: "Don't say it was just myself. I was merely the exponent for what God called me to do. ... I didn't know until these past five years that God could be such a daily reality in my life."

The Honors

Rita Hay worth, whose pleasing face & figure have never been regarded as military secrets, won the title of No. 1 Back-Home "Glamor Girl" in a poll taken among overseas G.I.s by the Army Pictorial Service.

Ralph E. Truman, first cousin of the President, and commander of the Army's 35th Division until 1941, was awarded Missouri's Meritorious Service Medal for faithful Sunday soldiering as a Major General in Missouri's State Guard.

Frank Fay, oldtime vaudevillian whose wistful-mellow portrait of a drunk with an imaginary rabbit (Harvey) enchants Broadway audiences, was the best actor of the 1944-45 theatrical season, according to Variety's annual critics' poll. Best actress: Oldtimer Laurette (Peg O' My Heart) Taylor in The Glass Menagerie.

Good & Bad News

Joseph Stalin had good news of one son, bad news about another: Guards Colonel Vassily Josefovich Stalin won the Order of Suvorov, second class; Jacob Djugashvili, son by a first marriage, was reported (by Paul Ghali of the Chicago Daily News) to have committed suicide in 1943 in the Nazi Oranienburg prison camp.

General Mark Clark, lanky field commander of the Italian campaign, showed up in his home city and was roundly cheered by hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans, soundly bussed by his wife and daughter, Ann. He got home in time to attend Ann's graduation exercises at Marjorie Webster Junior College, Washington, D.C. and Cadet Mark W. Clark Jr.'s, at West Point, (see EDUCATION).

General Omar N. Bradley, home from the wars, was greeted by his wife at New York's LaGuardia Field, got in a blitz-quick kiss before photographers caught a more formal reunion.

Anthony Eden, Britain's hard-toiling, far-traveling Foreign Secretary, came down with a duodenal ulcer, was ordered to take at least two weeks' "complete rest." While he is gone, his boss, Winston Churchill, and Minister of State Richard Law, will carry on his job.

Fritz Mandl, sleek, shifty, Croesus-rich ex-Austrian arms manufacturer who has had his political troubles (he was blacklisted in 1944 by the State Department and is now rumored imprisoned in Argentina) ran into domestic trouble. He was sued for $80,000 in back alimony by his first wife, ex-Viennese Actress Hella Strauss. (Another Mandl exwife: Cinemactress Hedy Lamarr--see MILESTONES).

Cause for Complaint

Lady Astor, high-strung, American-born M.P., huffed, puffed and pleaded to no avail when Canadian MPs barred her from her London house, which had been requisitioned for Dominion overseas election headquarters. She was assured that she would be able to get in as soon-as the voting was over--nine days later.

General Joseph W. ("Vinegar Joe") Stilwell, 62, now at, a spit-&-polish job (Chief of the Army Ground Forces), was remembered in a more casually dressed post (U.S. commander in the CBI Theater). One G.I., not recognizing the General as he wandered about the front without his star-spangled insignia, commented: "Just look at that poor old man--some draft boards will do anything;"

June Havoc, pert musicomedienne who broke her kneecap last summer during a performance of Mexican Hayride, showed the injured member to interested doctors at New York State Workmen's Compensation Bureau, demanded more compensation for depletion of a capital asset. Paying customers, she explained, "expect to see my knees. I can't turn or kick and all I do is fake a few jitterbug steps."

Ezra Pound, brick-bearded expatriot facing a U.S. treason charge for broadcasting Fascist propaganda from Italy, debated what poetic justice should be in his case, finally concluded: "Well, if I ain't worth more alive than dead, that's that. If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinion, either his opinions are no good or he's no good."

Richard Lloyd George, Earl of Dwy-for, bemoaned the fact that he had inherited a title but no money from his father, the late David Lloyd George. "[Father] wasn't himself, or he never would have taken the title. . . . Suppose the Welsh National Hospital asks for a contribution. The donor's list will say, 'Earl Lloyd George of Dwyfor gave two and six [50-c-].' That would look very good!"

Frank C. Walker, outgoing Postmaster General, was advised by U.S. Circuit Judge Thurman Arnold that the U.S. Post Office should let Esquire's scantily-clad Varga girls alone, stick to carrying the mails. Upholding Esquire's right to low-cost mailing privileges, whether its frisky, odalisquey girls are art or not, Judge 'Arnold chided Walker's "mental confusion": "He appears to think . . . the second-class mailing rate . . . is an award for resisting the temptation to publish mate rial which offends persons of refinement. [No one gave him the right] to determine what is good for the public to read."

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