Fundamentals

Benito Mussolini was the posthumous victim of some inside dopery. Myriam Petacci, sister of his last mistress, Clara, who was killed with him, declared that Benny was really rather a tinhorn. "He was very nice to her and sent her lots of love notes and flowers," she said, "but Clara got very little money from him, and the jewels were paste."

Adolf Hitler, inside & out, according to U.S. Army medical research so far: he had stomach trouble, throat trouble, insomnia, imagined he had heart trouble, had a dread of getting fat, got prematurely bored with sex, acquired a stoop, a tremor in one arm and a drag in one leg, and turned yellowish from dosing himself with patent medicine.

Hedda Hopper, who knows Hollywood frou-&-frou, went to England to get some fundamental stuff. "During the war, every home in England was in the front lines," the high-styled gossipiste told her wide-eyed readers, "so I want to know what the masses thought."

Ben Hecht, Hollywood-Broadway literary swashbuckler, gave the Manhattan press the inside dope on how he buckles down to work for the cinema. "I'm a Hollywood writer," he explained. "So I put on a sports jacket, and take off my brain."

The Duke of Wellington celebrated Waterloo Day as usual by calling on his landlord to pay the rent. Paid annually to the King for the sprawling Strathfield

Saye estate given by the nation to his

great-grandfather, "The Iron Duke," the

traditional rent is one small French tricolor.

On the Wing

Lady Astor finally sailed back to England as she had come, happily firing from port and starboard. In the U.S., said the teetotaling viscountess, she had found too much sex in advertising, too much talk about disease on the radio, and too much liquor in the young folks. "Nevertheless," she reported, "I've had a wonderful time."

Laurence Olivier & wife Vivien Leigh hopped home to England from Manhattan --in fits & starts. First stop: Windham, Conn., where their giant four-motored Constellation, minus a motor dropped on the Connecticut countryside, was skillfully crash-landed in a 3,000-foot belly-skid. Declared Olivier: ". . . None of us was frightened at all." Seven hours later, 41 of the 42 passengers--all but a thoughtful Catholic priest--tried it again in another plane, and made it.

Earl Browder also hippety-hopped homeward, from his junket to Moscow. When reservation trouble (or something) slowed him down in Britain, the Security Police put him up between hops--incommunicado.

James Joseph Tunney, man of affairs, was in Mexico City. In the air, with the help of Tunney money: a new "luxury" air service to the U.S. and Canada.

Major Arthur Wermuth, the erstwhile "One-Man Army of Bataan," now touring with an air circus (though he was not a wartime flyer), flew higher & higher. Mrs. Fred Steele of Denver announced that he and her daughter--a parachutist with the circus--were engaged to be married. No word came from the Filipino nurse who claimed he married her in 1941 (she's suing for an annulment). Word did come from his Traverse City, Mich, wife of the past ten years--"Well, that does befuddle me."

Troubles & Doubles

Fritz Kreisler, 71, was doing all right after an emergency appendectomy at a Manhattan hospital.

The Maharaja of Indore, 37, who arrived in Boston in bad shape two months ago, was in good shape after a lung operation.

Will Hays, 66, was confused with an Encino, Calif, neighbor named Will Hays, who died. Ex-Cinema Czar Hays, alive & well, modified only slightly the standard denial. Said he: "The rumor of my death is just as exaggerated as was the remark that Mark Twain made famous."

Mrs. Harrison Williams, famed for her just-so hair, parties and clothes, lost her Micky, the much-photographed beige mongrel that had constantly kept her company in all the best places. Micky, whom she picked up in Capri in the '303, died in Manhattan at the age of twelve (kidney trouble).

Martha Gellhorn, with ex-husband Ernest Hemingway and the horrors of war-corresponding behind her, had turned to lighthearted comedy. With ex-Correspondent (Looking for Trouble) Virginia Cowles, the author of The Trouble I've Seen had written a play that London seemed to like--Love Goes to Press, full of untrustworthy male correspondents and brave and beautiful female correspondents.

Ship of State

Thomas E. Dewey nearly had a skeleton staff when a speedboat capsized on New York's Lake Mahopac. Briefly into the drink: the governor's executive secretary and the secretary to the governor's secretary.

Jimmy Walker, Manhattan's natty "nightclub mayor" of the '20s, turned an impossible 65. He looked better than ever. "I'm watching out," he said. "I'm taking care. I'm going home nights. Eleven o'clock--bedtime!"

Alexander P. de Seversky, planemaker and armchair strategist (Victory through Airpower), was elected mayor of Asharoken Village, N.Y. He got 23 of the 40 votes cast. Village trustee: Cartoonist Rube Goldberg.

Eddie Cantor went to Denver to award the city a handsome plaque for the safe-&-sane state of its street traffic, was dined by the mayor at the country club. Out to the club to police the dinner went all the cops in the business district, and Denver suffered its worst traffic tie-up in history.

Sharps & Plats

Arturo Toscanini had a home of his own to settle in when he got back from Europe. He licked the housing shortage by buying a place in suburban New York--got it for $100,000.

Beniamino Gigli, once of the Metropolitan Opera, who took his operatic tenor back to Italy in 1932, had less of a home than he used to. Fire (origin undetermined) swept through his Roman villa, did $22,000 damage.

Guy Lombardo, Gibraltar of the dance bandsmen, became an airline operator for Manhattan commuters, promised that his Long Island Airlines (4 Grumman Widgeons) would run 19 round trips a day for the hurried & well-heeled, beginning next week.*

Xavier Cugat, king of the rumba, was legally serenaded by Manhattan's Town & Travel Wear, Ltd. The dress shop said that Cugat (who has been sued for a separation by his wife of 16 years) okayed "anything in the house" for Actress Lorraine Allen--whereupon Miss Allen brooded for two hours, then settled on something in taffeta with an off-the-shoulder effect. The shop ran it up, to order, and then Cugat sent it back. What the shop wants: $297.95, in jigtime.

*For news of another entertainer in business, see SPORT.

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