Glitter

Doris Duke Cromwell finally went to Reno--for relief from taxes, and a divorce "perhaps later on" from James H. R. (short-time Minister to Canada), who has rarely seen her in recent years. Three saddle horses, a shepherd dog and an automobile went along in a boxcar de luxe. Because Nevada levies no inheritance taxes, and few others that would affect her, the heiress planned to settle there. Still in the courts in New Jersey is a tax suit against her for $13,834,924.

"Junior" Hollcar, 34, the fabulously wealthy, highly glossy Maharaja of Indore, had to surrender the C card for his light sedan; the OPA suspended it till a year from next December. Gas had been issued to him for use in Los Angeles, but he had driven to Reno with it--for a divorce and a new wife (TIME, July 19). The Maharaja will not be walking, however. He and his new wife have other cars.

Literary Set

Ernest Hemingway kept on raising short stories at his farm near Havana while For Whom the Bell Tolls had its premiere in Manhattan (see p. 55). The producers planned to send a print of the film (99 pounds) down to the farm.

Lin Yutang appraised himself in Manhattan: "I think I am about as moral a man as anybody and that if God loves me only half as much as my own mother, He will not send me to Hell. That I know. If I don't go to Heaven, the earth is doomed."

Wendell Willkie sold One World's movie rights to 20th Century-Fox for a reported $100,000, planned to turn the money over to war charities.

Warriors

Lieut. Commander Harold E. Stassen, who resigned as Governor of Minnesota last April for active duty with the Navy, finished an eight-week advanced training course, graduated from the Navy's school at Fort Schuyler in The Bronx, got an assignment "outside the continental limits." He had won honors in everything.

David Edward Rickenbacker, 18-year-old son of the famed Army flyer, joined the Marines in Manhattan, said he still hoped to get into the Air Corps but had no ambition to fly. He dotes on engines, wants to work with a ground crew. His father, said he, "used some pretty colorful language" when he first learned his son was snooting the Army, but finally took it like a man.

Colonel Elliott Roosevelt, whose aerial reconnaissance of Rome mightily helped the bombers that came after, returned to Washington, D.C. for temporary duty there.

Grace Thorpe, daughter of Jim Thorpe, once-famed Indian halfback, graduated from training school at Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., was assigned to WACtive duty as a recruiting aide.

Patty Berg, top woman golfer, joined the Women's Reserve of the Marine Corps.

Lieut. General George S. Patton Jr., it appeared, owed Admiral Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham a bottle of Scotch--the General had bet the Admiral that it would take more than eight days to unload the task force on Sicily.

Lookers

Ann Corio, long the "Most Beautiful Girl in Burlesque," and now a cinemactress, explained with high logic why she had always stripped down to "lingerie or panties" rather than the classic G-string: "If a girl takes off her clothes, you don't expect to see her in a rhinestone G-string with fringe and tassels, do you?"*

Luise Rainer packed her things in Manhattan for a return to Hollywood after four years, planned to make it a 15-day trip, cried: "I will jump in every river and eat sausages out of my hand and see the sun come up every morning. Really, that is my ideal of life."

Vets

Vincent Youmans, veteran hit composer (Tea For Two, Hallelujah, Great Day, Without A Song), was back on Broadway, with plans and a backer, nearly ten years after t.b. had put him out of action. His backer: Doris Duke Cromwell (see col. 1). Among his plans: two musicomedies (Good Neighbors and Joe), a cinebiography of Tchaikovsky.

Geraldine Farrar, soprano emeritus, sent OPA General Manager Chester Bowles a few suggestions from Ridgefield, Conn., where she heads a consumer committee of the local rationing board. Her ideas: reduce OPA's printed matter and its "complex reiteration"; reduce the "verbiage to a point of clarity"; have a little faith in the average merchant's honesty and stop prying into his affairs; cut down on exhortations to the consumer; throw out the "paragraph dictators and their Bourbonesque indifference to the attitude of the general public."

Betty Blythe, five-alarm figure of the early silents (The Queen of Sheba), was trying a comeback with a tiny part in a Columbia quickie, Crime Doctor.

Enrico Caruso's widow, Dorothy, who got out of Italy in 1939 and is now living quietly in Manhattan, told an interviewer she doubted that bombings would unite the Italians against the Allies, explained: "Every city is ... like a country itself. ... If Rome is razed to the ground Florentians will say to the Romans, 'If the capital had been in Florence, where it should have been, this would have happened to us, not you.' "

Henry Ford, as he approached 80, gave his formula for success: "Do your own work, mind your own business and don't engage in controversies. . . . And, above all else, keep away from lawyers. They are bound to get you into trouble."

* Critic George Jean Nathan, following his own fetishes, urged that "once a girl strips, she should be revealed not in bare anatomy but in a very sheer thin blue dress with a white lace collar."

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