Slings & Arrows

Juan Domingo Peron, boss of Argentina, peered into the future, reported back that 1948 would be "very bad" and 1949 "terrible." But he was doing his best, he said, scooping up a slightly congested metaphor: "I am trying to bring accord . . . so that we may all kick the ball toward the same goal. . . ."

Novelist Knut Hamsun, 88, who won fame in the '20s with his hard-breathing accounts of man's bare-knuckled fight with Mother Nature (Growth of The Soil), was sued in Norway for the damage he had done his native land as a wartime collaborator. "The Germans expected a lot from me," protested the 1920 Nobel Prizewinner, "but they were not altogether pleased." Altogether pleasing or not, Collaborator Hamsun owed the nation $86,000, the court decided.

Playwright Thornton Wilder learned that he was a banned author in Germany's Soviet zone. The Skin of Our Teeth had the wrong "theories about the inevitability of war," and Our Town had the wrong attitude toward family life.

Alf M. London of Kansas, in Manhattan for a visit, dropped in at the opera, and was forbidden to enter the Metropolitan Opera Club for a snack at intermission: he was not wearing tails. Though his host was the club's president, Landon reported later, "nothing . . . would change the mind of the man at the door." Observed the onetime candidate for President of the U.S.: "It's not the first time I was barred from a place."

Elsewhere in Manhattan, best-selling Mystery Writers Richard & Frances Lockridge (The Norths Meet Murder) suffered a robbery with a mysterious touch of insult. The robbers spread Mrs. Lockridge's jewelry out on a dressing table and left it there, but decided to take a typewriter and an old overcoat.

Hearth & Home

In Paris, Miss Paris of 1947 -- a leggy actress named Kay Trevil -- declared that Americans had "more character" than Frenchmen, said she would sail for the U.S. this week to marry the credit manager of a clothing store in Columbus, Ohio.

Also in Columbus, Ohio's Governor Thomas J. Herbert, 53-year-old widower, prepared to marry Mildred Helen Stevenson next week. The bride-to-be, 40, used to be secretary to the governor's doctor.

In Pasadena, Calif., an all-male jury considered the case against Sugar Heir John D. Spreckels III, whose blonde wife, Lou Dell, charged that he had whaled her with a poker. Pondering in private for 7 1/2 hours, the jury decided that he had not.

Virginia Weidler, Hollywood moppet of a little while back, announced to the press that she was going to have a baby next July.

Shirley Temple's was due the end of January.

Dinah Shore expected hers any minute.

Nods & Becks

In Hollywood, Actor Robert Montgomery (who drove an ambulance in France in 1940) was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor; in San Francisco, the Legion's butter-plate-sized Grand Cross was hung on General Mark Clark.

Baltimoreans, observing their city's 150th anniversary, nominated their greatest citizen. The late Financier-Philanthropist Johns Hopkins won first place, the late Cardinal Gibbons second, Edgar Allan Poe, third. Way down the list, but on it with 21 votes: the Duchess of Windsor.

A Manhattan cafe that calls itself the Royal Chicken Roost offered Singer Margaret Truman a six-week engagement, with options, at $10,000 a week. The management's extra persuasion: "We would even change our name."

In London, the literary Sitwells' Sir Osbert Sitwell won the Sunday Times's literary prize of -L-1,000. "This occasion is particularly gratifying to me," said the happy winner, "because from my earliest days my two chief characteristics have been vanity and avarice."

Season's Greetings

Things were seasonably merry on the Christmas-tree farm at Hyde Park. Elliott Roosevelt, who owns the business with his mother, sold twlve-foot trees at $1 retail, to "make Christians out of Christmas-tree dealers," he explained. He had sold 50,000 trees wholesale, and figured that within a few years he would be selling 100,000 a year. Following precept with example, Elliott & wife Faye (in a mink coat and jodhpurs) juiced up the sales by doing some hawking in person--and got rid of 500 trees in one day.

To Novelist Esther Forbes, whose Paul Revere won the $500 Pulitzer Prize in 1943, came a gay package of Christmas goodies. A not-yet-published Forbes manuscript won the M-G-M Novel Award. It was worth $150,000 outright, and possibly $250,000 more if the book sales go well.

Susie Kirk, 58-year-old soap heiress (Kirkman's Soap Flakes), faced the new year with at least one worry off her mind. A Chicago court saw her point when she pointed out that money isn't what it used to be and it costs more now to make ends meet. She thus won a boost in her annual trust allowance--from a grinding $30,866 to a humane $50.000.

Field Marshall Karl von Rundstedt (ret., by request), who once commanded German forces on the Western front (and began the Battle of the Bulge), got a ten-day Christmas leave from a P.W. camp in Wales to visit his ailing son back home.

Auto Heir Horace E, Dodge Jr. and the Stamford, Conn, police traded their respects. Forty-seven-year-old Playboy Dodge trucked to the police department enough Rhode Island Reds to provide every man on the force with a Christmas bird. When he started for home he found he had a parking ticket.

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