"Free Agent"

Laura Ingalls, pint-sized, trophy-winning aviatrix, was jailed by the FBI in Washington as an alleged propaganda agent for the Nazi Government. Speaker at many an America First gathering, peace-pamphlet "bomber" of Washington in 1939, Isolationist Laura was charged with having been on the Nazi payroll (and failing to register as an agent) since Aug. 1. She took up flying in 1928, began setting records in aerobatics in 1930. She was the first woman pilot to fly east-west nonstop coast to coast, bagged a Harmon Trophy in 1935 "I was a free agent and took no orders," she claimed at a hearing last week. "I undertook something that I thought I could handle alone, and I guess I overreached myself." For lack of $7,500 bail she went to jail to await a hearing on the day after Christmas.

Court Calendar

King Zog of Albania, exiled in London, begged to differ with the Italian puppet government in Tirana, declared Albania was not at war with the U.S. but with Italy.

Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose produced, costumed and acted in Cinderella, a Christmas pantomime given "somewhere in England." Margaret Rose took the title role, Elizabeth played the Prince. One of their props from the royal attic: an old sedan chair of Queen Anne's.

Crown Prince Olav of Norway Clippered from Lisbon to New York under the pseudonym "Oscar Dahl" to spend Christmas with Crown Princess Martha and their three children in Washington.

Sir John Laurie, Lord Mayor of London, stumbled out of his car in a blackout, fell, broke his wrist. He put off the trip to the hospital till he had done his job: posting outside Mansion House official notice of a royal birth (see p. 42).

Warriors & Defenders

William Phillips, 64-year-old former U.S. Ambassador to Italy, was appointed blackout officer for Beverly, Mass.

John Nicholas Brown, famed in 1900 as "the richest baby in the world" (after his father and uncle both died, left him their fortunes), took charge of the evacuation committee for starchy Newport, R.I.

Christopher Morley Jr., 25-year-old son of the writer, was a member of an American Field Service ambulance unit assigned to the Middle East.

Transcendent Eagle

Louis Michel Eilshemius, scrag-bearded, self-styled Mahatma, Supreme Parnassian and Grand Transcendent Eagle of Art, spent half a century painting in obscurity, writing letters of self-praise to editors, growing poorer, bitterer, more desperate. In 1932, when he was 68, fame and recognition came to the old man. Two Manhattan galleries held exhibitions of his paintings, the Metropolitan Museum bought one. Last week, from the musty, gaslighted Victorian brownstone house his father left him (on which he was unable to pay the mounting taxes), Eilshemius was taken to Bellevue Hospital, placed in the psychopathic ward.

Comics Section

Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr., 16, admitted his father was training him in the tricks of the trade. "But I may be a concert pianist," he added.

Robert Benchley Jr., 22, was made president of the Harvard Lampoon, campus comic magazine. Brother Nathaniel had the job four years ago.

Benito Mussolini took up flexing his 58-year-old muscles in public again. Italy's official news service, Stefani, let everybody know he had joined some infantrymen and "marched with them several miles on foot."

Music Makers

Geraldine Farrar composed, directed and designed costumes for a Girl Scout Christmas pageant at Ridgefield, Conn. She also wrote a poem, The Christmas Donkey, led the singing of the national anthem.

Jose Iturbi pondered an invitation to direct the Palestine Symphony next summer. Among the inducements: transportation by R.A.F. bomber; "the largest and most luxurious air-raid shelter in the Near East, with marvelous acoustics."

Sergei Rachmaninoff played at his first concert (with the New York Philharmonic) since he burned the forefinger of his right hand. To protect his fingers from cracking, he had put on collodion, a bandage. Then he lit a cigaret. When he ripped off the burning bandage, he ripped off a layer of the "new skin," a layer of real skin, postponed a tour to Dallas and Chicago.

Ethel Merman (Panama Hattie) admitted she had married again. Husband No. 2 is Robert D. Levitt, Hearst promotion man in Manhattan. She met him last April, six months before her first husband, Actor's Agent William J. Smith, divorced her on the charge that she deserted him in January after two months of married life.

Pluggers & Donors

George Herman ("Babe") Ruth walked into Manhattan's defense-bond headquarters, asked for $100,000 worth. Informed that Treasury restrictions let him buy only $50,000 worth a year, he left a $50,000 order for Jan. 2.

Archbishop Francis Joseph Spellman handed New York City's Red Cross $1,000 for the war fund, disclosed that he had contributed one pint of ecclesiastical blood for the blood bank.

Waite Phillips, oil-wealthy Tulsa financier, gave the Boy Scouts of America: i) his 91,000-acre ranch near Cimarron, N.Mex.; 2) a 23-story skyscraper in Tulsa.

The ranch is a collection of mountains, mesas, foothills and prairies. The skyscraper is the $5,000,000 Philtower Building, air-conditioned, fluorescent-lighted.

Mrs. Anthony Drexel Biddle received a present in London for the relief of child air-raid victims in Hawaii. The present: gs i id in pennies. The donors: child air-raid victims in the East End Youth Hostel.

Lily Rons, Gertrude Lawrence, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Bert Lytell, Edmund Gwenn, Lenore Lonergan all climbed into brocades to whoop it up for United China Relief at the opening of Manhattan's Burma Road Mart (see cut).

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