Jigs & Judgments

The wife of a Tahitian planter who had entertained Voyager Thor Heyerdahl and friends at a hula party in Papeete decided that the dance was strictly a private affair, never meant for public eyes. Since Heyerdahl filmed it, then used a few seconds of the shot in his movie Kon-Tiki, she sued for $150,000.

Shirtless and full of aloha spirits, Cinemactor Zachary (Born to Be Bad) Scott walked into a Honolulu penny arcade where a bemused crowd gathered to watch him shimmy through a barefoot hula. The show ended when, cops arrived, charged Scott with being drunk, bedded him in jail for six hours.

A Los Angeles judge decided that silent Cinemactress Dolores Costello, 45, onetime wife of the late John Barrymore, had grounds for divorcing her second husband, Dr. John Vruwink, 60. Said Dolores : "I got what I would call the monastic treatment. He wouldn't speak for days at a time." Even worse, she said, he pushed her around the kitchen in one row, and she got her head caught in a swinging door.

Federal Judge Benjamin Harrison heard the income-tax evasion case against Gambler Mickey Cohen, sentenced him to five years in jail plus a $10,000 fine, then commented: "You're not as bad as you have been pictured. Perhaps more of us would be gamblers if we'd been so lucky as you have." That conclusion hotted up the Tennessee temper of crime-busting Senator Estes Kefauver: Cohen should have been given a heavier sentence "instead of a pat on the back." From the Billy Sunday Memorial Tabernacle near Warsaw, Ind. came the view of Evangelist Billy Graham: "I am praying that after Mickey Cohen has paid his debt to society, he will give his heart and life to

Christ. He has the making of one of the greatest gospel preachers of all time."

Back from Europe, the Democratic National Committee's India Edwards brought glowing reports of U.S. ladies abroad: Ambassador to Denmark Eugenie Anderson "is loved by everybody." Minister to Luxembourg Perle Mesta "is the darling of Luxembourg; people just adore her." Margaret Truman did "a great job, making friends for the whole U.S.," and Mrs. John McCloy, wife of the U.S. High Commissioner, "sees every German who wants to see her."

When the U.S. Embassy in Madrid recently returned a half-forgotten Gilbert

Stuart portrait of George Washington, his 31st successor, Harry Truman, took one look at the picture and said: "He hasn't got his wooden teeth." Art experts called in a dental expert with calipers to measure Washington's nose, upper lip and chin, then compared the findings with similar measurements of other Stuart portraits. His verdict: President Truman is undoubtedly right; Stuart painted this portrait with the famous dentures missing.

Trade News

Leaving to take her strip-tease talent on a tour of England, Gypsy Rose Lee obliged shipboard photographers with samples (see cut), called her sister June (Affairs of State) Havoc to get in on the bon voyage act for plugs all around.

After working with television for eleven months, Eddie Cantor admitted to Variety that he liked it, although it had some tricky moments: "Television is murder on the phony. Those brutal cameras, those revealing closeups, are tougher than the Kefauver committee. TV exposes hypocrisy, insincerity, anything that's faked and dishonest. That television screen in the living room tells you more about a man's insides than the X-ray machine in a doctor's office. When you've been tested in television's tube, mister, you've had it."

After waiting almost 18 months for his money, the Rome obstetrician who delivered Ingrid Bergman's son by Roberto Rossellini sued for $4,000. In Manhattan, meanwhile, Ingrid's former husband Dr. Peter Lindstrom and their daughter Jenny Ann, who used to be called Pia, boarded the Queen Mary en route to Sweden, where Ingrid will have a chance to see her daughter for the first time since her great romance separated them.

Broadway Showman Billy Rose found himself co-starred with unwanted billing in an impromptu extravaganza featuring a part-time pal, blonde Actress Joyce Mathews, twice married to No. 1 Television Comedian Milton Berle and twice divorced. The show opened when Manhattan cops answered a frantic call from Rose. Joyce had locked herself in a bathroom of his luxurious private apartment over the Ziegfeld Theater. When the police arrived, Rose shrilled a few stage directions ("Don't tell any reporters about this! I want no publicity. It could ruin me! Please, no publicity."), then led the way to the barricaded bathroom, where police broke through the metal door and found Joyce. She was bleeding from both wrists which she had scratched with a double-edged razor blade. "Why did this have to happen to me?" Rose moaned. Then he remembered his wife, Eleanor Holm, onetime Olympic swimmer and Aquacade beauty. "Now is the time to have a wife," he muttered, and got on the telephone. Eleanor, a wife in need, arrived soon after Joyce had been taken away in an ambulance; she pitched in, and did her best to help shield Rose from reporters and photographers. In the hospital, in no danger, Joyce was questioned by police. Why had she done it? Between puffs on a cigarette, she explained: "I just love; razor blades."

After Ohio's author-farmer Louis Bromfield called Kentucky bluegrass a "noxious weed," Kentucky's Governor Lawrence W. Wetherby and a group of fellow bluegrass fans hopped a plane and headed for Bromfield's Malabar Farm near Mansfield to convert the heretic. First step: the gift of a sack of bluegrass seed. Further inducements: a case of Kentucky bourbon and a home-smoked ham.

The City Council of Fredericksburg, Va. decided that the new abbreviated street signs reading "Jeff Davis Boulevard" were both confusing and improper. People might think they meant Hobo King Jeff Davis instead of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, the Council ruled. It ordered bigger signs to carry the full name "with all the dignity that great man decerves."

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