Shreveport, La. radio officials several times silenced parts of a campaign speech by Governor Earl Kemp Long, Huey's brother, because of his hells, damns, other profanities. Finally, political prudence getting the better of discretion, they gave up and let him rip.

To his distinctions of being retired unbeaten world's heavyweight boxing champion and a friend of the literary great, James Joseph ("Gene") Tunney added the honor of being one of the best-hatted men of 1939, so chosen by Hat Style Council, Inc., which presented him with an assortment of a dozen.

A French patrol ship followed a Spanish steamer carrying German goods but did not seize her. Reason: the cargo included an automobile sent by Adolf Hitler as a present to France's neighbor, Francisco Franco.

Records of the Bank of North America disclosed that thrift-teaching Benjamin Franklin was overdrawn at his bank nearly half the time. Reason: In his day U. S. banks (like British banks today) customarily lent money to their customers in the form of overdrafts.

To Grace Rardin Eames Doherty, Oilman Henry L. Doherty left his entire fortune, "substantially in excess of $1,000,000" (1929 estimate: $100,000,000). To 21-year-old Annie Laurine MacDonald Dodge, onetime telephone operator, daughter of a Canadian tugboat captain and widow of Automobile Heir Daniel Dodge, who drowned on their honeymoon, a Detroit probate court judge awarded $1,250,000. Two of the dead man's sisters, horsy Isabel Dodge Sloane and Winifred Dodge Seyburn (who inherited nothing), let it be known they would not let Annie get away with it.

Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfurst, 43, pro-Nazi cosmopolite, who recently lost a breach-of-contract suit against Lord Rothermere (London Daily Mail), landed in Manhattan, would not discuss politics. Said she: "If you'd like to write something about me, you might say I am known for my loyalty to my friends, my love of music, and my taste in dress. I have also won two beauty contests, one in England and another in Austria."

Gawky, cadaverous Sinclair Lewis, rehearsing his third stage role, as the canon in Paul Vincent Carroll's Shadow and Substance, overrode the veto of his technical adviser, the Rev. Edward Murphy, performed in a redlined, red-piped cape (correct for monsignors) on the ground of "good theatre."

Mrs. Stella Crater Kunz, remarried relict of New York Supreme Court Justice Joseph Force Crater, who disappeared Aug. 6, 1930 and was declared legally dead last June, collected $20,561 from insurance policies on the life of her first husband, after: 1) the insurance companies conceded Judge Crater's death; 2) she posted a $23,500 bond to indemnify the companies if the judge should reappear.

Blonde Cinemactress Ann Sothern, scheduled for an appendectomy, announced her scar would be crescent-shaped. Reason: "I have discussed all possible scars with my physician and I have chosen what I believe to be the most artistic. . . . It's costing me so much I'm going to keep it just 'for myself. I will contemplate its artistry in private."

Harold Giles Hoffman, ponderous ex-Governor of New Jersey and a member of the Union Society for the Detection of Horse Thieves and Recovery of Stolen Horses and Other Property (seriously established in Colonial days), started his 1940 campaign for a comeback by riding to the annual luncheon of the society on a genuine horse-drawn stagecoach, brandish ing a brace of nickel-plated revolvers.

Durward Howes, 40, editor of America's Voting Men (Who's Who of Youth), published in Los Angeles his list of the outstanding ten young men of 1939, passed over John Steinbeck, 37, because The Grapes of Wrath was not "a worthy contribution to American literature." The ten: Philo Farnsworth (television), Lou Gehrig (heroism), Ernest Orlando Lawrence (Nobel Prize), Fulton Lewis Jr. (radio news commentator), William Samuel Paley (president CBS), Perry Pipkin (president U. S. Junior Chamber of Commerce), Philip Dunham Reed (General Electric board chairman), Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota, Cinemactor Spencer Tracy, Herman B. Wells (president Indiana University).

Back to Manhattan from France, Anne Morgan, younger (67) spinster sister of Financier J. P. Morgan, was confronted by newsmen with the information that, according to the 1938-39 Who's Who, and a subsequent Satevepost story reference (taken from Who's Who), she had died on Aug. 25, 1936. Astringent Miss Morgan declared: "I am not dead and I am not prepared to die."

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