Nominee

Mrs. Winston Churchill was nominated Woman of 1943 by the London Daily Express, which observed that she "did what every woman in these isles would give her soul to do; she went out to fetch her man home" (see p. 75).

Alexander Vassilevsky, chief of the Red Army General Staff, was the Express's Man of the Year.

Betty Grable's unborn child (by trumpeting Husband Harry James) was nominated Babe of the Year.

Gary Cooper, entertaining troops in the South Pacific, was chosen by Army Air Forces Corporal John Richardson, too busy to be fetched home, to take a New Year's greeting to Mrs. Richardson in Los Angeles. The highpocketed cinemactor carried out the thoughtful corporal's instructions to the letter (see cut).

Persons of Notes

Marjorie Lawrence, Metropolitan Opera soprano stricken by infantile paralysis in 1941, took two more steps toward full recovery in Miami Beach--her first actual steps in two years.

Lily Pons & Lauritz Melchior won prizes at Manhattan's Madison Square Garden Poultry Show--the soprano with a silver-laced Cochin hen named Gilda Rosina, the tenor with Great Tristan, a cock of the same breed. Melchior and the happy couple posed for the most elliptical picture of the year (see cut).

Artur Rodzinski, new conductor of the New York Philharmonic, farmer in Stockbridge, Mass., got a Guernsey cow named Tulip as a 50th birthday present from the orchestra's board of directors.

Erich Leinsdorf, 32 next month, was inducted into the Army three months after he had succeeded Rodzinski as conductor of the Cleveland Symphony.

Irving Berlin succeeded Wendell Willkie (who succeeded Cordell Hull) as winner of the American Hebrew's annual medal for the promotion of better U.S. understanding between Christian and Jew.

The late Lorenz Hart, lyric-writing half of Broadway's team of Rodgers & Hart, was too befuddled with alcohol to write a proper will--so charged his brother, Comedian Teddy (One Touch of Venus). When Lorenz Hart died last November, he left an estate of some $500,000, 30% to his business manager, 70% to brother Teddy. Teddy said he thought he was to get the whole thing, set out in a Manhattan court to break the will.

Bidu Sayao, Brazil's button-cute soprano gift to the Metropolitan Opera, explained to the Manhattan press the Brazilian woman's mission in life: "To be beautiful, to be kind, to make music, to make life pleasant for man."

Comics

Flattop, pig-faced captor of Dick Tracy, wounded the boosters of Sallisaw, Okla. Cartoonist Chester Gould had introduced his newest menace as a "killer from Cookson Hills," where Sallisaw proudly perches. Promptly to Gould went a grieved resolution adopted by the Sallisaw Lions Club and the city commission, damning Flattop as an "insult" to local citizens.

Fred Allen, noting the Broadway success of the all-Negro Carmen Jones, hurried to share with the show world an idea of his own. In a letter to Variety he suggested an all-white revival of Shuffle Along.

Litterateurs

Betty Smith (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn) explained to a Manhattan reporter her peculiar conversational habit of pausing halfway through her sentences: she used to live close by the elevated.

President Getulio Vargas of Brazil, ex-critic, author of his own speeches (twelve published volumes), was made a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. He was the first Brazilian chief of state to make it.

Lucius Beebe, Manhattan exquisite who writes rococo chatter for the New York Herald Tribune, was much miffed by the wartime atmosphere. Wrote he: "... Pretentious folk are busy with cosmic urges which only tomorrow will be remembered as humorous follies and bumbling with skirmishes with destiny which next week will be recalled as yesterday's hysterical giggles." He predicted that Edward Ringwood Hewitt's savory volume of reminiscences, Those Were The Days (TIME, Dec. 27) "will be read and remembered when the apologies of current admirals and the postured stompings and poutings and cries of 'Me, I'm the bravest one' of war correspondents have been baled up for the winter furnace. The heroics and hysteria of wars are mostly dreary stuff. . . ."

Somerset Maugham anticipated another theatrical version of his 22-year-old story Miss Thompson, which became Rain. Coming to Broadway was a fancy edition called Sadie Thompson, "with book and lyrics supplied by Howard Dietz and tunes by Vernon Duke. . . . Anton Tudor will direct the dances and plans to utilize a Polynesian chorus in addition to a corps de ballet."

Vets

Dr. James Rowland Angell, 74, mellifluent ex-president of Yale, NBC's educational program counselor, succeeded Yale's late Professor William Lyon Phelps as director of Manhattan's heavy-busted Hall of Fame.

William H. Blackburne, silent, leonine, 87-year-old keeper of Washington's National Zoo, retired after 53 years at the job, planned to amuse himself in his leisure with trips to the zoo.

Reconnoiterers attached to the 32nd Army Division, at General Douglas MacArthur's headquarters, led a press party in the Marines' invasion of Cape Gloucester. When Jap planes passed over, Wisconsin's bespectacled ex-governor went to New Britain's grassroots.

Lieut. Commander Gene Tunney wanted to see how the Marines were "taking it," took it pretty well himself when he was rapidly led over one hour and 20 minutes of jungle trail to an advance post in Bougainville. On the way back, 45-year-old, 210-lb. Tunney set the pace with a dogtrot, kept his followers puffing.

Lieut. Richard ("Dick") Carver, General Bernard Montgomery's stepson, captured in Libya, had escaped from a German prison camp and held a new job as "Monty's" aide-de-camp.

Lookers

Jacqueline White, cousin of Frank Knox, started collecting honors. For her pint-sized pin-up pictures she was proclaimed the Wallet Girl of the 13th Armored Division.

Greta Garbo, reported Columnist Leonard Lyons, had taken up the Atalantan practice of strolling down Manhattan's Madison Avenue with an apple in each hand. Lyons failed to report why.

Evelyn Nesbit was set for a Broadway comeback this week. The famously fatal beauty, now 58 and a plump-faced grandmother, was to try her luck as a singer at a spot called Tony Pastor's Uptown.

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