Golden Hours

The high-kicking and the high-keyed had an eventful week.

Three Manhattan judges, after deliberating for seven minutes, decided that blonde cigarette girl Patricia Miles had not proved that Howard Hughes's kewpie-like party boy Johnny Meyer was the father of her ten-month-old son. She thus lost her suit for support. "Through with women?" said the happy victor, in response to a query from the press. "I love 'em all." Miss Miles wondered aloud: What next? "I haven't got $2 to my name."

Lana Turner and Tyrone Power, allegedly the hottest gossip-column romance since Garbo and Stokowski, allowed "a studio spokesman" to inform the world that the thing had dropped dead. Three days later lovelorn Lana arrived in Manhattan from Hollywood with her four-year-old daughter Cheryl (who had a cold), and a new-found friend, grown-up John Alden Talbot (who looked fit as a fiddle). Hollywood Columnist Louella Parsons explained all about it: "Lana said . . . 'The separation . . . has changed Ty. . . . He came back* determined to spend his time fighting Communism!' "

Humphrey Bogart & wife Lauren Bacall took special pains to explain about themselves and Communism, at a Chicago press conference. Bogart read a prepared statement about their trip to Washington (six weeks ago) to protest the Reds-in-Hollywood investigation: "I am not a Communist . . . I am not sympathetic . . . I see now that my trip was illadvised, foolish and impetuous . . . I acted impetuously and foolishly on the spur of the moment, like I am sure many other American citizens do at many times." Then he put the script down and explained: "We went in green. They beat our brains out."

Sally De Marco, half of high society's classiest dance team, unveiled a novel taffeta-&-tulle number she declared she had run up herself, explained candidly to the press, "I just kept adding stuff to the back" (see cut). She habitually spent "at least $50,000" a year on her clothes, said she. "But I don't mind, really," she hurried on, making everything clear. "Dancing in a new dress is . . . completely exhilarating."

And Mrs. John Jacob Astor dazzled Manhattan's El Morocco nightclub by exhibiting Wow-wow, her Chihuahua, in a new look. Wow-wow--a male--had a diamond ring on each paw and a sapphire choker around his innocent neck.

Brown Studies

H. L. Mencken, cackling, venerable Sage of Baltimore, made quick response when he read a complaint that no local museum had a painting by Thomas Hart Benton. He himself had one, said Mencken, "in my cellar at this minute, gathering dust"--and he offered it to "any gallery that wants it, entirely free of all cost or expense." The Baltimore Museum of Art got the painting (an abstraction done in Benton's "earlier and more foolish days"), and Mencken asked as his reward an exemption on his income tax.

Debate among the British over capital punishment inevitably brought word from George Bernard Shaw. His feeling: "The public right . . . to kill the unprofitable or incorrigibly mischievous in self-defense can never be abrogated." For some reason, 91-year-old Shaw felt pretty strongly about philanderers: "The man who lives by promising to marry women and deserting them as soon as he has spent all their money," he declared, "is a social weed, to be uprooted no less than if he drowned them in their baths."

"I've had several letters," claimed Columnist Elsa Maxwell, "asking me to give the lowdown on . . . the eating habits of the literary world." So Elsa faithfully reported the fare served at recent dinners by Know-It-All Clifton Fadiman and Best-Seller Marcia Davenport (East Side, West Side). It made interesting reading for struggling young writers. Dinner at Fadiman's: "A rich cream soup [with] crabmeat . . . next . . . a blanquette de veau with wild rice. A great assortment of cheeses . . . ice cream flavored with ginger . . . five different wines." At Davenport's: "Borsch, with champagne added . . . truite au bleu with hollandaise . . . roast goose with dumplings . . . Central European desserts . . . flavored with rum . . . a dry white wine, preferably Pouilly Fusee."*

"In this age of divorce," wrote the late Antoine de Saint-Exupery in a letter just found among his papers and published in Town & Country, "we can divorce ourselves from things as easily as from persons. Automatic refrigerators are interchangeable. The home is just an assembly of parts. Likewise a wife, a religion, or a party." He observed that "today a man can be tamed by a slot machine or a bridge game. . . ." Concluded Saint-Exupery: "I hate this century with all my heart."

Purple Raiment

In Ouchy, Switzerland, a fashionable Lausanne suburb, burly, 26-year-old King Michael of Rumania, and blonde, 24-year-old Princess Anne of Bourbon-Parma--a cousin of King Frederik IX of Denmark (and once, briefly, a Manhattan department-store salesgirl)--sat out the gossip in the Hotel Beau-Rivage. They were well chaperoned by Michael's mother and maternal aunt (Queen Helen and the Duchess of Aosta), and pretty well protected by layers of contradictory statements and explanations. Said Anne: "We are not engaged and are not going to be." Said Michael: "There is absolutely nothing to the reports." Said his uncle Nicolas: "The engagement might be announced in a few days." Said Michael's secretary: his boss would ask his government for permission to marry--"perhaps next week."

In Hyderabad, the Nizam of Hyderabad, 61, anna-pinching Richest Man in the World (estimate of his fortune: $2 billion), escaped an assassin's bomb, tossed at him as he was taking his evening drive.

Jeff Davis, 64, King of the Hoboes, announced between trains in Indianapolis that his boys were going into politics. His choice: "Dewey if nominated."

The Air Is Filled with Music

Soprano Regina Resnik sang the role of Donna Anna in Don Giovanni at the Met while a detective watched from the wings. Nothing happened. The 25-year-old blonde had had anonymous threats from a woman she thought must be mad, since the threatener doubted Regina's ability to do justice to the role.

Soprano Marjorie Lawrence, who made a wheelchair comeback in 1942 after being stricken with polio, prepared to come back a little more this week. After months of practice she would sing standing--in Elektra in Chicago's Orchestra Hall--for the first time in six years.

Song-&-Glance Man Maurice Chevalier, who made a pile in Hollywood in 1935, returned to the scene of his triumph and was promptly buttonholed by the state tax collector. Chevalier, who declared he had forgotten all about it, sighed, handed over the delinquency: $20,918.

* From three months of good-will globe-trotting for Hollywood.

* Preferable spelling: Pouilly Fuisse.

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