The Working Class

Manhattan's Communist Daily Worker seized the occasion of the 132nd anniversary of Walt Whitman's birth to claim him as its very own. "How," cried the Worker, "could the Philistine rulers of capitalist culture stomach an artist who took the side of the people and who dared, despite the heavy penalties of poverty, censorship, and the deprivation of a wide audience, to tell the truth about the organized thievery that passes for the Two-Party System?"

Cheered on by his royal father, Prince Knud, brother of Denmark's King Frederik and heir apparent to the crown, eleven-year-old Prince Ingolf set off in a 1,300-ft. soapbox derby near Copenhagen. His car hit a top speed of more than 18 m.p.h., but he finished eighth.

Radio-TV Comic Arthur Godfrey, whose formal higher education consisted of "one short year at Hasbrouck Heights High School" in New Jersey, got an honorary Doctor of Science degree at Rider College in Trenton, N J. Then Dr. Godfrey, who makes close to $1,000,000 a year, gave the students some unorthodox commencement advice: "Don't try to conquer the world. Remember the more you earn, the more you pay in taxes. You can't become wealthy today."

Between planes in Dallas, Madame Minister Perle Mesta gave reporters some inside political dope: General Eisenhower, she said, is not going to run for President. "That is a carefully prepared answer," she assured the newsmen, "only I haven't been able to use it till now because nobody asked me the question."

The name of T. S. Eliot appeared on the London weekly Time & Tide's list of readers who had submitted correct solutions to its crossword puzzle No. 1113. He got no prize, but admitted, "I like to see my name in print."

Domestic Issues

Shortly after his wife filed for separate maintenance on the ground that he drinks too much, Actor Sonny Tufts gave a concrete demonstration of the sort of thing she had in mind. For noisily arguing with the entrepreneur of an all-night eatery over a $4.55 bill for fried chicken, cops arrested Tufts and a Hawaiian actress, booked them for drunkenness.

From Manhattan, Actress Ella Raines angrily wired Hollywood cops to recover a set of patio chairs she said had been pinched by Actress Miriam Hopkins. Miss Hopkins promptly obliged with a calmer version of the story: "I borrowed the patio furniture for a party, and I was just being real neighborly, you know, like swapping rice pudding or something . . . She said some vicious things about me, but I don't want to say anything about Ella. She's a sweet little girl and I can't understand it ... I've never laughed more. We've all been absolutely hysterical."

The night clerk in a Vancouver hotel took one look at a strange man in a beard, dungarees and cowboy boots, refused him lodging for the night. Just in time, the girl at the cigar counter saw that underneath it all was Bing Crosby, dressed for a fishing trip, and the crooner was hustled to a comfortable suite.

After one of her occasional visits to her former residence, Eleanor Roosevelt told her newspaper audience about it. "I am always surprised to find people who carry as much responsibility as the President . . . looking moderately well," she wrote. "On this occasion I thought Mr. Truman looked very fresh and vigorous."

The Road Ahead

St. Louis newsmen had reason to suspect that General George C. Marshall, after his seven-day ordeal with the Senate committee investigating MacArthur's firing, had had his fill of questions. To Missouri's Washington University, where he will speak during commencement this week, Marshall sent word that he wants neither 1) press conference nor 2) reporters at the airport when he lands.

Elaine Barrie, sometime actress, last wife of the late John Barrymore, got a mark of 95--one of the highest on record --on her examination to become a registered representative on the New York Stock Exchange, went to work for Schafer, Long & Meaney as a customers' man.

While leading a patrol through hills outside Inje, Korea, Captain. William D. Clark, West Pointer son of Army Field Forces Commander General Mark W. Clark, took a Communist slug in his right knee, was evacuated to a hospital in Tokyo.

Gifts, flowers and telegrams poured into the Manhattan dressing room of Mary Martin, and a packed house at the Majestic gave her the ovation of the season when the curtain dropped on her 900th--and last--U.S. performance as Ensign Nellie Forbush in South Pacific. There were more gifts afterwards from the cast and crew; at a backstage champagne party, more flowers and a big hug from her replacement: Singer Martha Wright. Miss Martin will sail for England, where she will play the same role at the Drury Lane next fall.

Four weeks after entering the naval hospital in Bethesda, Md., to recuperate from his 17-month imprisonment and torture by Hungarian Reds, International Telephone & Telegraph Assistant Vice President Robert Vogeler walked out "considerably improved." After delivering a speech, he plans to go to Colorado for two months as guest of the governor before starting back to work.

Francis X. Bushman, 68, and Betty Blythe, 57, "the hottest lovers of the silent screen," were mauled in Chicago by some admiring contemporaries: members of the Cook County Grandmothers Club. The occasion also inspired Bushman to some reminiscences of the old Essanay studio days in Chicago, when "we kept three saloons in business." Said he: "We all drank ourselves to death. You know, Rudy Valentino died of that wine we both drank. I got it from an Italian bootlegger who put lethal things in it. Rudy was a neighbor of mine and ... he used to borrow cases of wine when he ran out."

Immortalized in a wood carving over the bar of the new Swedish Lloyd liner Patricia: Winston Churchill, with cigar and easel, William Shakespeare, Falstaff, Beowulf.

After a year of prodding the nation's big-shot gamblers and politicians as chief counsel for the Kefauver committe, Rudolph Halley decided to have a go at politics himself, tossed his hat in the ring as the Liberal Party candidate for President of the City Council of New York.

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