April in the West End

Often now, on moonless nights, the Nazi planes roared over. But in London's better cocktail bars last week, life still sparkled. There was gaiety in London--thanks, in large part, to visiting Americans.

OWI's towering (6 ft. 7 in.), gloomy-browed Playwright Robert E. Sherwood (Idiot's Delight)* sometime Presidential speech doctor, was in town to "coordinate" U.S. propaganda between London and the Mediterranean. He managed to get around to a fair share of cocktail parties, where he looked miserable, helped serve drinks. Playwright Sherwood's There Shall Be No Night, one of wartime London's smash hits, had to suspend performances when Actor Alfred Lunt caught bronchitis fire-watching, and passed his cold along to Actress Lynn Fontanne.

Most of the bright, personable U.S. propagandists in London were on OWI's payroll. CBS's restless William Paley, 43, his dog tag made by Cartier, bombarded Europe by radio. Litterateur Lewis Galan-tiere plotted U.S. propaganda for France. Ace Hollywood Scenarist Robert Riskin (It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town), intermittently in & out of London, Washington and Sicily since 1941, managed the OWI film division. Deep in publications & pamphlets: the Viking Press's wealthy president, Harold Guinz-burg, and wealthy George Backer (who was reported to be spending his idle hours translating the Declaration of Independence into U.S. Army officialese).

Three ex-newsmen labored to cement U.S.-British good will. Major Ralph Ingersoll, editor-on-leave of Marshall Field's hyperthyroid newspaper, PM, was hard at work as an Army Intelligence officer, seldom had cocktail time. Publisher, now Lieut. Commander Barry Bingham was bossing the Navy's press office at General Eisenhower's headquarters. Herbert Agar, ex-editor of Publisher Bingham's Louisville Courier-Journal, showed up cool and well groomed at luncheons and unveilings whenever his boss, U.S. Ambassador Winant, was otherwise engaged.

Private William Saroyan (The Human Comedy, The Beautiful People), his irrepressible individuality undiluted by Army life in a London film unit, was seen saluting a Red Cross worker. He explained: "I saluted the dignified expression on his face." Major Bobby Jones worked with Air Forces Intelligence, in a country town where sugar beets grow on the golf course. Pfc. Irwin Shaw, New Yorker author and anti-war playwright (Bury the Dead), traipsing across Piccadilly in his ill-fitting G.I. clothes, observed: "When we get out of here, they'll be dizzy with Lebensraum."

*The Voelkischer Beobachter has referred to OWI's overseas director "that delighted idiot."

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