Birdseye Blurb

"Contrary to popular belief," declared a secretary of the Soviet Consulate in Manhattan last week, "there are cows in Russia."

Occasion for this naive pronouncement was the news that Mrs. Marjorie Post Close Hutton Davies, apparently confident that her newly-appointed husband would remain Ambassador to Russia for at least two years, was sending 2,000 pints of frozen cream to Moscow and 25 electric refrigerators to keep it in. The Red comrade's smartcrack betrayed gross ignorance of Mrs. Davies' corporate connections and of the capitalistic uses of publicity.

Announcers of this Davies act were Walker-Gordon Laboratories Co., Inc., purveyors of milk, at Plainsboro, N. J. The cream, it was announced, will be preserved by the quick-freezing Birdseye process (named for its inventor in 1925, Clarence Birdseye) which keeps food fresh for two years. Owner of the Birdseye process is General Foods Corp., of which Mrs. Davies, daughter of Cereal Tycoon Charles William Post, is a director and the largest single stockholder.

General Foods, which has marketed Birdseye Frosted vegetables, fruit and meat in the U. S. since 1931, chose the Davieses' diplomatic migration to introduce them to Europe. Problem there is transportation, since ordinary refrigerator cars do not maintain the zero temperatures at which Birdseye foods must be kept. Arrangements have been made for a special car to transport Mrs. Davies' cream and other Birdseyetems. Meantime last week a Birdseye specialist, sent to Moscow for the purpose, was having the Embassy current stepped up high enough to power the 25 special Birdseye refrigerators.

How Ambassador-Designate Davies regards these preparations he confided to friends in the dining room of Washington's Mayflower Hotel one day last week. "We are going to live in Moscow very quietly, very simply," said he. " 'When in Rome,' you know. . . . We'll have just the comforts one ordinarily has in America. We are taking our own staff of servants. But, you may say, we shall have a minimum menage."

That the Davieses may leave Moscow long before their cream is gone was last week prime Washington chitchat. No secret is it that that fragile Anglophile, Robert Worth Bingham, who failed to inform the State Department of the Simpson Crisis until it exploded in Commons, has impressed his superiors as something less than an ideal Ambassador to the Court of St. James. Should he retire soon as expected, what more natural than that the able husband of one of the nation's richest women should hope to succeed to his glittering job? Attesting their eligibility, Joe Davies & wife have rented for the Coronation one of London's stateliest houses, The Holme, Regent's Park mansion of the second Mrs. Marshall Field III.

The potency of Mr. Davies' political backing was indicated by the guests honoring him at a private dinner in Manhattan's Ritz-Carlton Hotel last week. With Senator Pat Harrison as honorary chairman and Senator James F. Byrnes as toastmaster, the list included Postmaster General Farley, Presidential Secretaries McIntyre and Early, Senators Barkley, Copeland, Davis, Duffy, McAdoo, Tycoons Walter P. Chrysler and Gerard Swope.

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