Leg Work

Elder Statesman Bernard Mannes Baruch got a wire of thanks from Mrs. Winston Churchill. She said that she and her daughters were glad to have a couple of dozen silk stockings he had slipped among the Prime Minister's effects for them.

Emcees

Slim Lauretta Jefferson, great-granddaughter of the late, beloved actor Joe Jefferson (Rip van Winkle), was ready in New York to hit the tanbark as the first ringmistress of Ringling Bros.' new "Continental Circus."

In Manhattan's Hotel Plaza, titian-topped Countess Renee Maeterlinck told how she got her husband, octogenarian Belgian dramatist Maurice Maeterlinck, to write the memoirs he will publish next autumn: "I trap him as a cat would a mouse. I ask him questions. I make him answer me. Then pretty soon he's writing a book."

Saludos, Amigos

Three-chinned Diego Rivera and one-handed Jose Clemente Orozco, famed Mexican mural painters, have had years of hot personal differences. Last month Rivera walked into Orozco's studio to ask for a few pointers on fresco technique. Last week, in a lecture to an audience which included Orozco, Rivera called him the greatest living artist in their field.

Fortunes of War

Nineteen-year-old Frederick Cecil Bartholomew's noggin, once famed for its curls in his days as a child cinemactor, has been "G.I." for three months. In Amarillo, Tex., British-born Bartholomew got the U.S. citizenship his army time entitled him to seek. Asked by girl reporters if he had made any other pledges, the First Class Private answered: "No. I'm safe for a while yet."

Manhattan taxpayer and Presidential yachtmate Vincent Astor was upped to captain in the U.S. Naval Reserve, 15 months after going on active duty. He is "attached to the office of the Eastern Sea Frontier."

A week after the death in Alaska of his father, Major Kermit Roosevelt, Dirck Roosevelt, 18, asked for immediate induction.

Flip Skip

Honor guest at a newspapermen's jamboree in his home town of Erie, Pa. was Lieut. Colonel Philip G. Cochran. With him was his old Ohio State University chum, Cartoonist Milton Arthur Caniff, who put him into Terry and the Pirates as long-jawed, rip-roaring Flip Corkin. Thirty-three-year-old Fighter Pilot Cochran said that people were always asking him about his girl in the cartoon (Taffy, now No-Name Miss). Of a successful raid he said: "I figured that if I tossed the general staff around some and blew up their headquarters ... it would delay them some."

Round 3

Hannah Williams Dempsey came out for the third and last round of her divorce trial fagged but trim. After chief co-respondent Benny Woodall disclaimed any & all connection with the Dempseys' "martial troubles," the onetime show girl took the stand to tell how the Manassa Mauler once sent her guests home in an ambulance, once suggested an illegal operation to her, once tossed her into a closet, once waved a gun at her (she said she told him to "Take one good shot and end my misery"). When a candid photo of her with Benny and his sister was shown in court and Benny was asked to point out which were his arms, Benny candidly couldn't. When subpoena-shy Yvette Colbert went west, Hannah's countersuit went west too. Both sides admitted there was nothing more to tell. Next move was the referee's.

Near Miss

U.S. Citizen Franklin Roosevelt called for his housekeeper. Had his application for Ration Book 3 been mailed? White Housekeeper Mrs. Henrietta Nesblr looked at the clock, put in a hurry call for OPA, had the Post Office rush over a blank. Forms had been delivered, days before, to the big Presidential mail desk; but Harry Hopkins and other forehanded White House residents got there first. Crowding the deadline by hours, harried Housekeeper Nesbit mailed the Roosevelt application in time.

Roses and Trousers

At Valley Forge General Hospital the Duchess of Windsor, in "Wallis Blue" and a sable scarf, bestrewed wounded U.S. fighting men with 1,500 rosebuds. Accompanying her, the Duke was clad in a grey plaid ten years old (too old to be one of those English drapes which some stylists conceive as a possible source of the zoot suit). The Duke compared the style of reporters' pants with his own, remarked: "I think it's a silly rule that does away with trouser cuffs."

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