Inside Dopesters

Randolph Churchill, plump columnist-son of Winston, surveyed Manhattan, recalled its aspect three years before, reported to his readers changes that struck him most: women weren't as good-looking as they used to be, but necklines plunged deeper. Analyst Churchill (whose occasional companion has been ex-Best-Dressed Mrs. William Rhinelander Stewart) explained that the great beauties were all in Florida at the moment.

John O'Hara, best selling literary specialist in big-city barflies, heels and floozies, got a thorough quoting-over from New York Post Columnist Earl Wilson, who interviewed him at a bar. O'Hara by Wilson: "If I write any extended work, I gotta goddam well get offa the booze. . . . Well, I'm going to level with you about Pal Joey. You are a guy that's got to be on the eerie, and you heard I wrote it while I was on the sauce. I didn't. I was sober ... I started [on 'a real beauty'] Thursday. By Saturday morning I'd drunk myself sober."

General Hideki Tojo got a language lesson while awaiting trial. When the lesson was over the ex-Premier knew just about as much as anybody else. Just what did "Hubba, hubba" mean, he asked a visitor from the American prosecution staff. " 'Hurry up,' " obliged the visitor. "Ah, so," murmured Tojo, "... I always thought it meant 'Remember Pearl Harbor."

Titleholders

Mrs. Elliott Roosevelt suffered 1946's most hair-raising tribute to date. A bunch of magazine illustrators informed the world she was among the owners of "the most kissable lips in America."

Marie McDonald, who claims exclusive rights to the nickname "The Body" (see cut), had contract trouble with Hollywood Producer Hunt Stromberg. She sued to cancel, but Stromberg brought to court a letter he thought proved that he and she were on fine terms. The letter opened "Dear Daddy S.," and informed him she had the measles. "They wanted to take pictures of my spots," she wrote, "but I drew the line. After all!" Signed: "The Spotted Body."

Chili Williams, "The Polka Dot Girl," wounded Dry-Goodsman William Schiller, who calls himself "The Polka Dot King." He had her under contract to wear nothing but polka dots (see cut), but lately, complained Schiller--a man who crosses his ts and eyes his dots--she had appeared dotless in public. He set out to break the contract.

Elizabeth Arden Graham, whose horse trainer was suspended last November for ephedrinizing a horse, professed to have little interest in winning the Kentucky Derby next month. "I am more interested," declared the tack-sharp cosmetiqueen, "in the sales showing of my new perfume, Amour D'Ephedrine."

Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm Hohenzollern, 65, chinless favorite of World War I caricaturists, received the press at his villa in Hechingen, let it be known that he missed the horses and golf of dear old Potsdam, that the House of Hohenzollern was ready to trot onstage at a moment's notice. Queried newsmen: did he mean son Louis Ferdinand? "Myself or my son," he corrected.

Noisemakers

Mickey Walker, welterweight-&-mid-dleweight -champion -turned-easel-painter, tried his luck as a Broadway actor. The show, Walk Hard, hit the canvas after seven performances. But critics found Walker "believable," applauded his "naturalness." His role: a prizefighter.

Erskine Caldwell, literary examiner of the itchy side of the South, suddenly made a noise in Toronto with his year-and-a-half-old novel Tragic Ground. A local judge decided it was obscene, ordered two booksellers tried for handling it.

Edmund Wilson, whether he liked it or not, was safe from the horrid publicity of a Boston book-banning. His Memoirs of Hecate County with its bedroom blueprints would not outrage Boston, because Doubleday publishers decided not to bother sending it there.

J. B. Priestley, solid Briton of letters, and tiny Minister of Education Ellen C. Wilkinson were separately moved to loud tuts by a Hollywood importation.

"I am all for fun," declared Priestley, "but to offer this dreary, dirty rubbish ... is an insult to our nation." Minister Wilkinson damned such "appealing . . . to the lower side of human nature," urged on schoolgirls (as future mothers and teachers) the goal of ending "things like that." The shocker: a new cinema version of Getting Gertie's Garter (b. 1921).

Maintenance Men

Gloria Swanson, failing to win the high-styled support she wanted from husband No. 5, Wall Streeter William N. Davey, managed to ward off a frumpy future. The svelte siren of the silents had sued for a weekly $1,000, won a neat but not gaudy $300.

James A. Stillman, late National City Banker, heir to millions, and co-star of one of the gamiest divorce suits of the '20s, turned out to have died deep in debt. Stillman and wife "Fifi" charged each other with offside parenthood--she by an Indian guide, he by a chorus girl. She got the divorce, promptly married Harvester Heir Fowler McCormick. A New York estate tax appraisal last week: Stillman owned $875,745, owed $1,079,539. Notable debt: $362,848 to the four Stillman children for their support.

Jacques Deval, 54, French dramatizer of drawing-room gaieties and boudoir confusions (Her Cardboard Lover, Tovarich, Boudoir), was sued for "adequate" separate maintenance in Manhattan by Actress-Wife Else Argall, 30. She charged that he got his boudoirs confused, had told her his gaieties were "necessary in order to stimulate his creative talents as a writer."

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