Screams & Shouts

Judgments were being snapped right & left.

Dwight Elsenhower, screamed Moscow's Literary Gazette, is a "mad warmonger," and his Crusade in Europe is "a peculiar mixture of insinuations, born of megalomania and artificial delirium." Ike himself didn't think it was quite so bad, although, like any neophyte author, he had a few doubts. In the New York Times Book Review he admitted that "I'm still not dead sure [it was worth bringing out]. I'm no critic. I've been a soldier all my life, and when you come down to it it's simply an old soldier's story."

An old admiral's story was also due for a clapperclawing. Burrowing in the archives of the Hungarian Academy of Science, Historian Tivadar Acs announced, he had found 130 documents which "reveal that Christopher Columbus was a pirate in the French service."

On the psychological front, somebody even wanted to shoot Santa Claus. St. Nick, said Psychiatrist Ludolf N. Bollmeier, of Little Rock, Ark., was a potential source of juvenile delinquency; little white lies about Santa might lead to "serious trouble later on." His advice to old-fashioned parents: "If you must tell children about Santa Claus, tell them it's just make-believe and not a reality."

The Very Rev. Hewlett Johnson, U.S.-touring "Red Dean" of Canterbury, thought he agreed with Harry Truman about red herrings (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). Declared the Dean: "Too much is being said about the. spy investigation. If the Russians did obtain any American state secrets they were justified in doing so because all nations indulge in spying."

Billy Rose, kinetic little man about Broadway, did a double take. After the first-night performance of Light Up the Sky (TIME, Nov. 29), he had admitted in print that it was "fast" and "funny." But a couple of Moss Hart's cast of caricatures bore a striking resemblance to Billy and wife Eleanor Holm; Billy simmered for a few days, then went back for a second look. This time, he reported with satisfaction, the capacity audience wasn't finding nearly so much to laugh at. "Opening night yaks were being greeted by yawns." Billy's diagnosis: "On opening night, the wise-guy audience laughed fit to bust, either because it was hep to Hart's lilliputian libels, or because it wanted the fellow in the next seat to think it was. But the average gent and his missus are evidently more interested in laughter . . . Light Up the Sky comes through as a private show-business joke . . ."

Elliott Roosevelt's one-man crusade to "make Christians out of Christmas-tree dealers" by underselling them (TIME, Dec. 13) ran afoul of some belligerent apostasy in Manhattan. "Let him sell his skunk spruce," snorted one dealer. "But the buyers will be getting stung--unless they like their needles on the floor instead of on the tree."

Gadabouts

Robert Walker, whose five-year career as the screen's clean-cut kid has been spattered by real-life divorce (from Jennifer Jones), a six-weeks marriage (to Barbara Ford), and a drunken run-in with the cops two months ago, took a trip to Kansas at the urging of his studio, for treatment at Topeka's Menninger Clinic. But he got out on pass after a couple of weeks, tanked up again, again got picked up by the police. This time he climaxed the evening by smashing three panes of glass in the station house with his bare fists (which later required nearly 100 stitches' worth of repairs), and roughing up a cop. This time there were no charges; the police just asked the Menninger people to come down and get him.

Cinemactor Errol Flynn left Manhattan, flew off to Havana for some yachting and a "much needed rest." Errol was tuckered from a tough week in the tabloids after he kicked a cop ("BARKING UP WRONG SHIN," headlined the New York Star) and got fined $50.

Back to London from Manhattan flew Lady Iris Mountbatten, lanky blonde great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, after two hectic years in U.S. gossip columns, on subway posters (endorsing chewing gum), and on the front pages (after bouncing a couple of checks). She'd be back in about six months, she said, after "a nice long rest" with the family.

British-born Novelist James Hilton (Lost Horizon), now a writer in Hollywood, made up his mind to stay, filed first citizenship papers after 14 years.

Finnish Composer Jean Sibelius thought the thoughts of an old man on his 83rd birthday, serenely considered future peregrinations: "I rather like Shaw's repartee," he said. "When he was asked if he feared death, he replied, 'Not in the least; I have good friends on both sides.' So have I."

In Lhasa, Tibet, the 13-year-old Dalai Lama replied to some direct-mail advertising from Poland's Polimex Cooperative Association. The Lama's answer arrived in hand-lettered Tibetan characters, enclosed in a bamboo tube. "Out of the list of things mentioned in your letter," read the translation thoughtfully furnished by Lhasa, "I would like to order an iron bridge for the benefit of my people."

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