Putting her trust in her honey-blonde hair, a little seashore hipper-dipper, and the eye-brimming distinction she imparts to the plainest photographic studies, 20-year-old Gloria Wood, star-minded daughter of Director Sam Wood (Kitty Foyle), petitioned in Los Angeles court for permission to discard her cinemagic name, call herself just K. T. Stevens.

Though (for reasons unannounced) he failed his preliminary physical exams, Benson Ford, 21-year-old grandson of Henry Ford, was classified 1A by his Mount Clemens, Mich, board on a 2-to-1 vote in which his fiancee's uncle, Charles McNaughton, dissented.

Summoned for active duty with the U.S. Army Engineers was convivial, hard-boiled Major Robert Reese Neyland Jr., skillful University of Tennessee football coach who for years kept the Volunteers among the nation's best.

Returning from their Easter holiday to school in the north of England, two young sons of Belgian Premier-in-Exile Hubert Pierlot were trapped in a railway coach that caught fire, killed as they leaped from the train. A brother, Gerard, 13, was badly hurt.

On William Shakespeare's birthday (April 23), the BBC broadcast to Germany records of swing versions of his lyrics, It Was a Lover and His Lass, Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind, 0 Mistress Mine, sung by Marion Mann accompanied by Bob Crosby's Bob Cats. Wrote London's Daily Telegraph: "The seemliness of presenting such versions of Shakespeare from his own land and on his own day to a people who have never concealed their respect for his genius is to be raised in Parliament...."

Hoary Viscount Dunedin, who sustains his 91 years with a Highlander's nonchalance, took some moving pictures of a bombed London building to take back for his northern friends to see. The venerable viscount, president of the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers, paid a fine of ten pounds, costs of five guineas, for breaking military rules.

Democratic Committee Boss Ed Flynn caught the measles from his nine-year-old son.

Elizabeth O'Connor, Ann Magnotto, and Billie Young, cafe waitresses, went wading in Washington's Rock Creek Park. They spied Lord Halifax strolling by with a friend, hopped out of the water, raced barefoot up to the British Ambassador and got his autograph on a popcorn box. "You've heard of Ramsay MacDonald," smiled Lord Halifax. "Well, this is his son Malcolm." He indicated the youthful British High Commissioner to Canada, in Washington for a short visit. "Hi, Male," said Elizabeth.

Otto Abetz, Hitler's Ambassador to Paris, got whooping cough.

In China last fortnight Franklin Roosevelt's oldest son Jimmy addressed Hong Kong's American Club, last week shook hands with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in Chungking, heard his first air-raid alarm (minus planes), got ready to fly to Cairo for a firsthand view of British Near East strategy. Seeking Pacific Clip per passage for himself and Major Gerald Thomas, his companion, Jimmy had found the Clipper booked up. Most vulnerable reservation was that of a U.S. General. Captain Roosevelt got it.

Tall, shuffling Frank ("Lefty") O'Doul, the "Man in the Green Suit," famed manager of the San Francisco Seals, who was twice champion slugger in the National League, tangled with a truculent fan in a Hollywood bar after his baseball team had lost to Los Angeles, got conked so roundly with a bottle that doctors said he might lose the sight of his left eye.

Long an enthusiastic interventionist, Harvard's slight, bespectacled President James B. Conant (see p. 34) this week advocated immediate entrance into World War II. Said he: "Our best hope of avoiding a later battle against desperate odds is to become a naval belligerent now. It is not too late. But the hour for action has clearly struck."

Humorist Frank Sullivan, who as one of the 21 backers of Manhattan's critic-blessed scream-hit Arsenic and Old Lace has lately looked with a benevolent eye on drama critics, proposed that "as a mark of simple gratitude a 1 per centum share of the play be given to each New York critic. . . . This would give the fraternity a certain economic security, make the chips on their shoulders seem less like Yule logs, and make the critics as persons more winsome." For this he was attacked by mercurial super Press Agent Richard Maney. Riposted Stockholder Sullivan: "I am aware that he is only a tool in the hands of [Producers] Jake Lindsay and Lee Grouse, and that they hope through him to goad me to such a rage that I will tear up, or return to them unopened, my dividend checks. They are barking up the wrong tree. I am an oak, Mr. Maney is a shrub."

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