People

"Names make news." Last week these names made this news:

Austrian monarchists, flocking to an exhibition in Vienna of relics of the late great Emperor Franz Josef I, stared at a tray of cigar butts, badly chewed and bearing this label: "Certified by his valet, Ketterl, to have been smoked by His Majesty on the 12th of August, 1914."

Princess Catherine, pretty young daughter of the late King Constantine of Greece, turned up "incognito" in Hollywood, wanted to visit studios. Sigvard Bernadotte, grandson of Sweden's King Gustaf V, who was disowned for marrying a commoner and now works as a cameraman for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, took her to see 300 pies and 200 cream puffs thrown at a cinemactor. Gasped Greece's Catherine to Sweden's Sigvard: "My goodness, how I envy you! I wish I had a job here."

One hundred and fifty Manhattan bankers, businessmen, editors and miscellaneous bigwigs had fun initiating New York's short, swart Mayor Fiorello Henry LaGuardia into the Circus Saints & Sinners, a club whose underlying purpose is to fit out a home for retired circus performers. Under a tent in the Hotel Gotham, Marionettist Tony Sarg set a small gilt chair in a five-foot sawdust ring, set Mayor LaGuardia on the chair. Cried Ringmaster Sarg: "Do you think he has enough hair to be Mayor?" Chorused the Saints & Sinners: "No." Ringmaster Sarg clapped a grey wig on the Mayor, added the fur trimmed cloak, tricorn hat and heavy chain of a British Lord Mayor. Then he pronounced him a Saint and a Sinner, summoned cameramen. Sinner LaGuardia, itchy under the wig, smiled feebly. Down upon his head fell a shower of popcorn.

New York's clubby Mayor LaGuardia appeared next with Alfred Emanuel Smith in a minstrel show of the New York lodge of Elks. Drawing the line at lampblack and red silk pantaloons, Messrs. Smith & LaGuardia wore tails, acted as interlocutors for 100 blackface minstrels including Justice Ferdinand Pecora of the New York Supreme Court.

Interlocutor LaGuardia: Who was that life insurance agent I seen you with last night?

Interlocutor Smith: That was no life insurance agent. That was Herbert Hoover.*

Reported the New York Times: "During a recess of the Mellon case being heard before the Board of Tax Appeals, John V. W. Reynders of New York, one of Mr. Mellon's chief advisers, overtook Andrew W. Mellon in a corridor outside the courtroom and was heard to whisper what sounded like, 'Lend me a nickel, Andy.' Anyway he got the nickel and disappeared into a telephone booth."

Next day the meticulous Times made this correction: "John V. W. Reynders did not borrow a nickel from Andrew W. Mellon yesterday. . . . Mr. Reynders did indeed ask Mr. Mellon for a loan of 5-c- but his employer ... did not have the money."

Up to the Cape Cod summer home of James Henry Rand Jr., wealthy president of Remington Rand Inc., late one evening, marched a grim and agitated agent of the Massachusetts State Income Tax Department. The agent seized 75-year-old James Henry Rand Sr. retired maker of card-index systems, hustled him off to the Barnstable town lockup. There Oldster Rand was charged with dodging Massachusetts income taxes of $35,000 in 1928-29-30. Reason for the sudden arrest, it turned out, was that the tax-collectors feared Mr. Rand might make a getaway on his son's yacht. Disgruntled Mr. Rand spent the night in jail. Arraigned next morning, he protested that up to 1932 he paid his taxes in New York. Furthermore, he could pay no Massachusetts taxes even if he owed them. Since 1925, when he merged Rand Co. with his son's rival firm, he had lost part of his fortune in the stockmarket, given another part to his children. Hounded by creditors, he finally turned all his assets and liabilities over to his son. A director of Remington Rand and several other companies, he owned no stock of value, had but one asset, a bank account containing $153.63. By order of the judge, Oldster Rand made over the $153.63 to the County Clerk, took a poor debtor's oath, went home.

Out of New York on his yacht Infanta sailed John Barrymore with a 10-year-old brunette "protegee" named Elaine Barrie. Next day a legal advertisement in Los Angeles warned that Actor Barrymore would be responsible for no debts but his own. Day after, Mrs. Dolores Costello Barrymore sued him for divorce, charging cruelty and habitual drunkenness.

*Director of New York Life Insurance Co.

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