Happy Birthday

Charles 6. ("Hell 'n Maria") Dawes,

Coolidge's Vice President and now board chairman of Chicago's City National Bank and Trust Co., celebrated his 84th birthday by brushing off newsmen who wanted his views on the state of the world. Growled Dawes: "I'm an old man. No one wants to hear what I have to say."

At 76, Lee de Forest, who sometimes wonders why he ever invented radio's audion tube, made a birthday wish: that the FCC enforce its ban on "those mediocre giveaway programs" and, while going about it, slap one on soap operas too.

Invalided in a Melrose Park, Pa. convalescent home, Poet Edgar Lee (Spoon River Anthology) Masters reached 80, marked the occasion by having a cigar, ice cream, cake and a shot of bourbon.

Inside Sources

Sexpert Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey pushed ahead the frontiers of education. On a month's visit to San Quentin prison to gather data on sex life in jail, he helped pass the time by lecturing the inmates on sex life outside.

Two veteran jazz bandleaders unburdened themselves on bebop. Sniffed schmalzy Guy Lombardo: "It's laid a big egg. As a matter of fact, it's nothing. I don't even know what they're doing, do you?" Snapped Swingman Tommy Dorsey: "I don't like bebop, and I admit it. I don't know anything about it, and I don't like the look of the people that do."

Adolphe Menjou, known for decades as cinema's fanciest-plumed male, got ready for a cross-country lecture tour that will give the citizenry the low-down on Hollywood. Said he: "Despite the fact that Hollywood is covered by more than 400 reporters, no one really knows what the town is like."

Czechoslovakia's Communist government decided to purge fairy tales from children's reading. Official replacement for Prince Charming as a schoolbook hero: President Klement Gottwald.

The Bright Side

Five weeks after he touched off a nationwide controversy by charging her with "anti-Catholic" bias, New York's Archbishop Francis Cardinal Spellman dropped in at Hyde Park to see Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt for 45 minutes of friendly conversation and a cooling glass of iced tea.

In Portland, Ore., Mrs. Roosevelt's first great-grandchild, three-week-old Nicholas ("Little Bear") Seagraves put on a below-par performance at an old F.D.R. sport: posing for a horde of photographers. While parents "Sistie" (White House moppet during the early New Deal) and Van Seagraves beamed over his public sendoff, Nicholas snoozed through the flashbulbs.

King George's ailing legs felt well enough for him to slip into his kilt at Balmoral Castle and cut loose in a Scottish reel.

Skating Cinemactress Sonja Henie and Socialite-Aviator Winthrop Gardiner Jr. took off in his brand-new plane for a Long Island weekend, leaving a slipstream of elopement rumors. Headlined New York's Daily News: SONJA, GUY FLY; TIE?

Lewis Douglas, U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, had some good news from his physician: his left eye, snagged with a fishhook last April, had begun to regain its sight.

Having started with the Post Office as a clerk ut 1935, Jesse Donaldson Jr., 38, began catching up with his father, the nation's first career-man Postmaster General since Benjamin Franklin. His latest appointment: assistant chief inspector of the U.S. Post Office.

On the Riviera, Amateur Painter Merle Oberon dropped into Lord Beaverbrook's villa to show one of her seascapes to Amateur Painter Winston Churchill. "What are those little white specks?" asked Churchill. "Sailing boats," replied Merle, unabashed. Said Churchill, recovering gallantly: "You have a nice eye for color." Then the two looped arms and went off for a swim.

Margaret Truman, who even at champagne parties prefers ginger ale or fruit juice, got her reward: a paid-up life membership in the W.C.T.U.

Troubled Times

Mexican Painter Diego Rivera, an on-again, off-again Communist Party member, found old ties still binding. When he sought a visa to attend a Los Angeles testimonial dinner, the U.S. embassy politely referred him to Attorney General J. Howard McGrath. Protested Rivera: "I don't have the honor to belong to the Communist Party. I'm just a simple democrat like anybody else."

Well after Orangemen's Day and far from the ould sod, Irish passions flared in Houston, at the expense of Glenn McCarthy's Shamrock hotel. Vandals dyed the water in the Shamrock swimming pool a deep orange, costing Millionaire McCarthy $159.40 for a rush job of draining out 100,000 gallons.

Racing against a November deadline on a play about The New Yorker magazine that he started writing nine years ago, Humorist James Thurber was "midway through the second act for the 28th time" when he got some news: another producer was putting on another playwright's comedy about the same magazine.

Besieged by a crush of autograph hunters at a Paris swimming meet, ex-Olympic Champion and ex-Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller fainted dead away.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.