Won Over

Princess Alexandra, seven-year-old daughter of the widowed Duchess of Kent, was royally shy and reserved with a group of U.S. Army men visiting her and her grandmother, Queen Mary--until Captain Stuart A. Safdi won her over with a package of gum.

Flight Officer Jackie Coogan, back in home-town Hollywood after a tour of combat duty with the Army Air Commandos in India, cashed in on a request by letter for a date: he had fallen for a pin-up picture of eye-filling Starlet Ramsay Ames.

Services Rendered

Milton Snavely Hershey, 86-year-old chocolate king, was strolling through spacious Hershey (Pa.) Park when he came across an unattended candy booth, promptly got behind the counter, sold 5-c- chocolate bars (20-c- worth) before the clerk returned.

Edgar Bergen, the power behind Puppet Charlie McCarthy, was decorated by order of Sweden's King Gustav V, with the Order of Vasa, 1st Class, for furthering American-Scandinavian relations. He promptly ordered a miniature medal for his meal-ticket.

Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby, WACommander, was a patient in the Army's huge Brooke General Hospital in San Antonio. Pending a complete medical checkup, her ailment was diagnosed as "exhaustion."

Sir Samuel Hoare, dignified, dapper Tory, holder of top British Cabinet posts (onetime Foreign Secretary, Secretary for

India, Home Secretary, First Lord of the Admiralty, Air Secretary, Lord Privy Seal), since 1940 negotiation-minded Ambassador to Spain, was upped to Viscount by King George VI.

American Ways

Henry Agard Wallace, who warmed up to his Chinese visit (TIME, July 3) by playing three fast games of volleyball with Superfortress airmen, and incidentally gave some pointers to teammate Captain Henry ("Hank") Greenberg, peacetime baseball star, later gave some pointers on the American way of living: "Some American has said that the Americans are fighting for the right to throw pop bottles at the umpire in Brooklyn. That's one way of looking at it. We're fighting for our way of life. That doesn't mean we are trying to make the rest of the world like America -- plumbing isn't everything. But we can hope that the rest of the world will come to like many of our ways and adopt them." Sylvia Sidney, declaring herself ready to resume her sultry stage and cinema career after three years of retirement received some nicely timed publicity, courtesy of something called the Artists and Sculptors Institute. Bracketing her with Cinemactresses Lana Turner, Rita Hayworth and Jane Russell, the Institute called Sylvia one of the "most exciting women in the history of motion pictures." Claude Wickard, Secretary of Agriculture, found it was true what they say about eating aboard trains these days. En route to Mexico, unable even to reach the dining car, he sent a telegram ahead to Texas Agriculture Commissioner J. E. McDonald, asked for twelve sandwiches, six pints of milk and six bottles of soda pop to be delivered during the Austin stopover.

Parental Cares

Orson Welles, who is suspecting a child by Wife Rita Hayworth (her own last published suspicion: "I hope it's true, but I don't know"), had other paternal worries when ex-Wife Virginia Lederer sued for increased support of their six-year-old daughter, Christopher.* She asked for $350 instead of $133 a month, plus maintenance of a $71,000 life insurance policy and a $100,000 trust fund, finally settled for $900 cash--after talk of setting up a trust fund was called a "futile gesture," because the onetime "boy wonder" was some $65,000 in the red despite his last year's screen and radio take of $80,000.

Barbara Hutton, about to assume her six-months-a-year custodianship of nine-year-old son Lance, was surprised when ex-Husband Count Court Haugwitz-Reventlow dropped his complete-custody suit (TIME, June 5), shocked when she heard that the Count had whisked the boy off to Canada. "Like any mother," said the five-&-dime Countess, "I am upset and distressed." The Count's attorney accused her of not bringing up Lance like "a gentleman and a scholar," explained the whisking: "The Count heard that Countess Barbara had threatened . . . to take the boy to Spain. ..."

Bumpers

John Jacob Astor III, pear-shaped prince of the idle rich, drove down a Manhattan street in a brand-new Rolls-Royce, smacked into a jaywalking 17-year-old boy, was hustled off to a police station, where he borrowed two nickels to make phone calls, was freed and cleared after two hours of questioning, left in another brand new Rolls-Royce which he had summoned with one of the borrowed nickels.

Countess Gisele de Chambrun, Manhattan socialite wife of a great-great-great-grandson of Lafayette, who "bumped" her car into a schoolboy last December, fracturing his legs, arms and skull, went to court to tell (in French) her version of the accident, got off with two $5 fines for "driving with a defective horn" and "failure to give right of way.".

Young Grads

Felix Browder, 17-year-old-son of the No. 1 U.S. Communist, was graduated as an "exemplary student" from the Yonkers, N.Y. High School, got democratic recognition of his top marks in American history: a medal from the American Legion, $5 in war stamps from the D.A.R.

Sergeant Simon Eden, 19, elder son of British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, was graduated from the Canadian Air Observers' School as an R.A.F. navigator.

*For Christopher Marlowe (1564-93), whose Dr. Faustus, staring Welles, was a Federal Theater hit revival just before the baby's birth.

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