Uniformity

Second Lieut. George Alexander Eugene Douglas Haig, 24, son of the famed British commander in World War I, was reported missing in the Middle East, believed to have been taken prisoner.

Clark Gable was made a corporal on entering the Army Air Forces School in Miami Beach. The nation's newspapers headlined the forced removal of his eight-year-old mustache.

Cinemactor Tyrone Power, 28, enlisted as a private in the Marine Corps Reserve in Washington. He will probably be on inactive status till he finishes a Navy picture.

Unmarried, British-born Shakespearean Star Maurice Evans, 41, naturalized last year, was commissioned a captain in the Army Specialist Corps, sent to Omaha to organize theatricals for isolated Army posts.

Crooner Rudy Vallee, who sneaked into the Navy for three months when he was 15, joined the Coast Guard in Long Beach as a bandmaster with a chief petty officer's rank.

Less kiddish Jackie Coogan, 27, was graduated as a glider pilot, made a staff sergeant, at the Army Air Forces training field at 29 Palms, Calif.

Plush & Minus

While wealthy, much-married Mrs. Margaret Emerson, mother of Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, was at the Saratoga races, fire broke out in her 24-room mansion at Sands Point, L.I., reduced it to a topless shell. Saved: some family portraits, a few other art works, a set of ebony chairs.

Harold S. Vanderbilt turned over to Navy Relief $300,000 paid him by the U.S. for his 117-foot yacht Vagrant, now serving in the Navy.

The Duchesse de Talleyrand, formerly Anna Gould, daughter of the late Financier Jay Gould, made one of the buildings on her estate in Tarrytown, N.Y. a guesthouse for sailors on leave. The Navy announced that the chosen sailors "lounge on luxurious chairs, eat off an old Italian table brought from a monastery, walk on Oriental rugs, store their clothes in huge old French armoires. ... A butler, cook, housekeeper and other servants cater to every wish. . . . Meals are served at every hour of the day."

Burly Barbara Lucy Taylor, Long Island's buster of police booths, was given 90 days in jail and a suspended one-year sentence for busting two more in Nassau County in anger after police gave her traffic tickets. The 28-year-old cop-hater served 25 days in jail last year for busting.

Texas' ex-Governor William Pettus Hobby, jowly, steady-eyed, 66-year-old publisher of the Houston Post, dropped into Manhattan with his much-photographed wife Oveta, head of the WAACs, said he felt the same as he had before she got famous. "Anything she does is all right with me," he declared. "We're all proud of her. She's doing her duty."

Hero's Return

"Little Falls, Lindbergh's Home Town," announced a painted legend on a Minnesota water tank for some years. Then the tank was repainted and the lettering disappeared. Last week Little Falls's town fathers voted a new paint job, specified that the sign be restored. Contrary to national rumor, the town claimed it never wanted the lettering to go--the local sign painter just couldn't climb that high.

Hey Nonnygenarian

Battle Creek's famed breakfast-food pioneer Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was still jogging along at 90, "firm in wind and limb" and looking like an otter-shaped Buffalo Bill. He trots a quarter-mile every morning, chews every mouthful 32 times, wears white clothes the year around to let the sunshine in (see cut).

Winston Churchill in Cairo during an audience with King Farouk of Egypt (see p. 42) lit up a royal cigar given him by his host. It was twelve inches long.

In & Out

William Saroyan closed his "Saroyan Theater" in Manhattan six days after his two playlets (Across the Board on Tomorrow Morning, Talking to You) opened there. Declared he: "The business project failed. The plays didn't." Most critics disagreed.

Irving Berlin handed Army Emergency Relief a check for $500,000--first installment of the profits from This Is The Army.

Beasts

"MY DOG AND I MUST PART," announced a two-column ad in the Hearst Los Angeles Examiner. "She's a swell shepherd police dog. . . . But I've joined the Ferry Command, can't take her on a job like that. If you're looking for a very fine dog, come down to 415 Ocean Front, Santa Monica. ... Go to the service gate. . . ." It was signed Randolph A. Hearst. Meantime Father William Randolph, who published a column-length farewell to "Dearest Helen" when his favorite dachshund died (TIME, May 11), started unloading his thoroughbred horses at auction.

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