Words & Music

Lauritz Melchior, great Dane of the Metropolitan Opera, sang Open the Door, Richard on a Kay Kyser radio show and got a chromatic catcall from the president of the National Association of Schools of Music for "debasing his art." Pooh, retorted jovial Heldentenor Melchior. If the musical stuffed shirts wanted more blatant examples of undignified monkeyshines, he could refresh their memories. Once, he recalled, he sang a hillbilly song on the Fred Allen show; another time, he danced an Apache number in which he impersonated a female who could have mopped up on Briinnhilde (see cut).

Columnist Eleanor Roosevelt mulled over a career woman's question for her newspaper readers. "Do I want to be called Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt or Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt? Of course, I want to be called the latter. ... I have never made any name for myself."

Ex-Floradora Girl Evelyn Nesbit, 61, the 1906 reason why the late Harry K. Thaw (TIME, March 3) shot Stanford White, walked into a windfall. She was airing her Belgian griffon, Hedy LaMarr, on Manhattan's Seventh Avenue, when a casting expert rushed up and offered the beast a trot-on role in the Broadway musical, Street Scene. Salary: $20 a week.

Give & Take

The gravy train made another Mississippi whistle stop. Senator Theodore G. ("The Man") Bilbo finally came across with the $100,000 church and parsonage he had been promising constituents ever since 1928. About 10,000 of them, flivvered down to Juniper Grove to get in on the 3,000-lb. beef barbecue. The Man had offered to let the whole 80th Congress come along in a body, but everybody seemed to have previous engagements. The Rev. Gerald L K. Smith showed up, though, to say that Bilbo was "the most persecuted man in the world." The Man himself wasn't talking: his mouth was still bandaged from a recent operation. But after the shindig the bandages parted and in popped a cigar.

In Canada's frigid Fort Churchill, on an inspection tour as chairman of the U.S.-Canada defense board, Fiorello La-Guardia slipped into a furry hat and posed for cameramen (see cut). Then he hurled a $500,000 legal snowball at the New York World-Telegram. He disliked some recent editorials on his mayoralty, he said, and was suing for libel.

To Washington Columnist Thomas L. Stokes went the third annual Clapper Memorial Award, named for Stokes's good friend and onetime boss, the late Raymond Clapper. Said the citation of conscientious Tom Stokes: "Crusading spirit . . . tackles controversial issues . . . fairness in reporting both sides."

The War Department didn't want Doc Blanchard & Glenn Davis to be selfish about their pro football (TIME, Feb. 10). Nevertheless, it would be all right for Messrs. Inside & Outside to make a movie on summer leave, the Department announced, and added the wistful hint that sometime soon another film could be shot on West Point's handsome campus.

It gets to be a nuisance when a boyish-looking U.S. Congressman can't stroll through the Capitol without being mistaken for a House page. Pennsylvania's George SarbacherJr., 27, Massachusetts' John Kennedy, 29, and Missouri's Marion Bennett, 32, were the chief victims. The House decided it had to stop. From now on House page boys would have to dress like Senate pages: black tie, white shirt, blue serge suit--with knickers. The pages rose as one boy. A uniform, yes. Knickers, never! The House yielded.

Coming & Going

After many a season of big-city haymaking, Farmer Henry Wallace's roots in Iowa looked pretty loose. He yanked them up and transferred his legal residence to New York City. Only he didn't exactly have a Manhattan residence yet: he was living in an apartment subleased from a sublessee. Anyway, said Wallace, Manhattan is just a place he's passing through. Eventually he hopes to spread out on his 120-acre chicken farm in South Salem, N.Y.

Mahatma Gandhi set a fashion for pilgrims. After tramping barefoot across miles of east Bengal, pushing his nonviolence campaign, he tried the next lap in a jeep.

When Viscount Mountbatten, India's new Viceroy, skidded and bounced his car off the road near Basingstoke, Hampshire, the ex-Commandoman jumped out, stuck up his thumb, hitched to London in a passing bus, which got him there for a date with the Prime Minister.

Mrs. Bettina Wilson, fashion editor of Vogue, held with progress. When she swirled into London's glacially snooty "400" club (evening dress required) wearing a breathlessly new, just-above-the-ankles Paris gown, she was politely given the gate and a little lecture. "One swallow does not make a spring," Proprietor George Rossi told her primly. "When we see more women wearing evening dresses above the ankles, we will revise our standards." Mrs. Wilson went quietly.

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