Old Masters

Frank Sinatra, the challenger, struck the first blow: a quivering delivery of Speak Low. The studio audience was not impressed. Old Master Bing Crosby gave them Candlelight and Wine. The audience fell apart. Almost no one in the U.S. heard the contest--it was short-waved to the U.S. armed forces overseas. For once, Sinatra's bobby-socked brigade lost out. The Hollywood studio's 320 seats were filled by servicemen and elderly local citizens. Sinatra: "I studied under some of the greatest teachers in the world." Crosby: "Where did you learn the most?" Sinatra: "Under the runway at Minsky's."

The Aga Sultan Sir Mahomed Shah (the Aga Khan) was photographed taking Spanish Senorita Zampelli for a sleighride at Switzerland's St. Moritz (see cut). Divorced from his Indian first and Italian second wife, he was separated last June from his French third. Since he fled to Switzerland from France in 1940, the 67-year-old, 273-lb. master of 12,000,000 Ismailite Mohammedan religious followers has also been separated from most of his fabulous income.

William Tatem ("Big Bill") Tilden, now a 50-year-old Los Angeles tennis coach, stepped into a squash court with 42-year-old Brigadier General Russell E. Randall (Fourth Fighter Command) at San Francisco's Olympic Club, lost the decisive fifth game by a score of 18-to-17.

Albert Einstein copied off in his own hand the text of his relativity theory (plus a new, unpublished manuscript), gave both to the Book & Author Committee to be auctioned off at a Kansas City war-bond rally (he threw the original relativity paper away after it was printed, in 1905). Bids of $11,500,000 were accepted--for the privilege of handing them over to the Library of Congress.

Old Scorers

Edgar Lee Masters, stocky, 74-year-old U.S. poet (Spoon River Anthology), was visited by a friend at his downtown Manhattan hotel room, found penniless and dangerously ill. Masters was hurried off to Bellevue Hospital. There he freely, cheerfully quoted from his works. Within a few days the Authors League underwrote his removal to a Bronx sanatorium. While he rallied, his second wife, an English teacher separated from the poet for some time, sole support of their 16-year-old son Hilary, said she was taking an apartment for Masters where she could see him through his convalescence.

Grover Cleveland Bergdoll, famed draft dodger of World War I, was finally released from Army disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth--after satisfying (in four years and ten months) the Government's 27-year-old score against him. Arriving at his farm, "Harmony Hill," near Philadelphia, he found it infested with reporters and cameramen. He swore and shouted: "I'll give you five minutes to get out of here!" Walking into the house past his children and their "Welcome Home" banner, he snapped to a servant: "Get me my rod. . . ."

Old Friends

Irving Berlin went to Dublin from Belfast (where he is running his smash musical This Is the Army) to see ailing, 59-year-old Tenor John McCormack. The singer sat down for dinner in red brocade smoking jacket, white silk scarf, black trousers, patent-leather elastic-side boots. Berlin left with an autographed recording of one of his hits (McCormack's version of God Bless America). "I had to send him away," said McCormack. "We were laughing too much and it hurt my sides."

Winston Churchill, who earlier in the week got an honorary membership in Lloyd's, got a pounds-&-pence "token of friendship and gratitude for his and his wife's great kindness and hospitality": -L-20,000 ($80,700) in the will of the late British banker Sir Henry Strakosch.

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