The Mixture As Before

Jerome Herman ("Dizzy") Dean, onetime fogball pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, beginning his new job as a TV newscaster for the New York Yankees, said that he would go right on talking "same as I do back in Arkansas." What about listeners in Brooklyn? "If they cain't understand me, we're even. I cain't understand them, either."

Playwright-Biographer Robert Emmet (Roosevelt and Hopkins) Sherwood told the New York Times Magazine how he had found, among the newly opened archives of his old friend Franklin Delano Roosevelt, some unpublished correspondence between F.D.R. and the late William Allen White, philosopher-publisher of Emporia, Kans. One of the letters, which had contained a snapshot of F.D.R. in one of his favorite seersucker suits, began "Dear Bill: Here is the seersucker picture, duly inscribed by the sucker to the seer."

Columnist Westbrook Pegler predicted that the present literary scene "might fairly be labeled by critics in the future, the golden age of garbage." Anyway, said Pegler, who used to be a good reporter himself, and careful of his facts, "fiction is a cowardly medium. The fictioneer needn't defend his position or accept the responsibility for the harm he does . . ."

All in the Family

Boxer-turned-Painter William Grant Sherry, 35, who last fall managed to patch up a loudly publicized spat with his cinemactress wife Bette Davis, 42> was in trouble again. Sherry had noisily broken up a party at the RKO studio, where the cast of The Story of a Divorce had just presented Actress Davis with a monstrous trophy for being "a good egg" (see cut). When he heard that his didoes had prompted highstrung Bette to resume divorce proceedings, the ex-pug unburdened himself to the press: "I'm tired of being pushed around. She was the breadwinner, and I was the housewife and I've loved doing it. All I asked in return was love and affection ... I'd always have dinner ready for her when she got home. I'd take off her shoes and bring her her slippers and fix her a drink. I pressed her dresses when her maid wasn't here. I'd draw her bath and give her massages. I felt it was a privilege to do things for her. She'd say, 'Well, what do you want? You're adequately fed and clothed.' I didn't want money. I wanted love, but she hasn't time for a husband when she works." After thinking it over for a day or two, Sherry added hopefully: "My wife is a troubled, mixed-up girl. She has never been really happy . . . If she would join me in consulting my psychiatrist, I am positive our marital problems could be worked out."

Wearing his usual three-buttoned business suit and high-laced shoes, Millionaire John D. Rockefeller Jr., 76, told attentive members of the New York Chamber of Commerce how he gradually took over the oil empire of frugal old John D. Sr. "My one desire was to help him in every way in my power. I was always . . . glad to black his shoes, to pack his bag, to act as the courier of family travels ... He never gave me any authority, any power of attorney, or any title. For years, however ... I signed his name ... to countless agreements committing him to large sums of money. He could at any time have challenged my legal right to do so. He never did . . ."

In Hong Kong, General Claire Chennault, 59, posed for one more family photo. The wartime chief of the Flying Tigers and commander of the Fourteenth Air Force, father of eight by his first wife before he married Chinese Reporter Anna Chan two years ago, obliged the birdie with a leathery smile as he cradled one-month-old Cynthia Louise. Anna and 14-month-old Claire Anna proudly looked on.

Hands Across the Sea

When he wrote that Englishmen dress "worse than any men alive," and added modestly that "the American male is the cleanest, neatest, most tastefully dressed he-creature in the world," brash Columnist Robert Ruark was asking for it. The editors of Britain's venerable weekly Tailor & Cutter let him have it with a full broadside: "Open your national wardrobe, Mr. Ruark, and take a good look inside. Look at those Picassian ties; like a rush of blood to the throat. Look at those wide, wide shoulders; extended out and beyond, like a great cloth milkmaid. Look at those long, tight-at-the-bottom hobble jackets. And wake from your little dollar daydream."

Applying for American citizenship: British Cinemactor James Mason and his actress-wife Pamela Kellino; British Novelist Anthony (The Vintage) West, son of Novelist Rebecca West and the late great H. G. Wells.

Veteran Washington Hostess Mrs. Perle Mesta, back home on leave after eight months as U.S. Minister to Luxembourg, hurried off the Queen Mary and immediately began reporting how things are over there. "The economic situation is marvelous . . . Grand Duchess Charlotte is a marvelous woman. She's so sympathetic . . . Luxembourg ... is the most beautiful spot on the continent. It's wonderful to be in a country with women at the head of it. . ."

All in Good Time

In Tynemouth, England, to launch the 28,000-ton tanker Velotina Princess Margaret inspired the manager of the Park Hotel to invent a new cocktail called the "Royal Blue." Ingredients: Blue curac,ao, parfait amour, French vermouth, gin, lemon juice, Angostura bitters.

British Novelist Graham Greene (The Ministry of Fear, The Heart of the Matter), turned up in Goslar, Germany, a little town near the border of the Soviet and British zones. Cagily dodging reporters' questions, he admitted that he was working with Director Carol Reed on a new movie along the lines of their current hit thriller, The Third Man.

Maria del Carmen Franco y Polo, 23, only child of Dictator Francisco Franco, became the Marquesa de Villaverde in one of the flossiest weddings that Spain had seen in years. Wearing a Balenciaga faille gown, with a veil sweeping down from a diamond and pearl diadem, the willowy brunette bride marched up the aisle of the Royal Chapel, of El Pardo Palace to face Enrique Cardinal Pla y Deniel, Roman Catholic Primate of Spain. Standing beside the Marques, Cristobal Martinez Bordiu Ortega y Bascaran, 28, who wore the red-and-cream uniform of the Order of "the Holy Sepulchre, Carmen said in a clear, ringing voice, "Si yo quiero" Following an old Spanish custom, the cardinal presented her with 13 pieces of silver (worth about $450), a gift of the bridegroom. Then the 800 guests moved on to a sumptuous banquet in the palace.

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