Royalty

Queen Elizabeth, visiting a U.S. Army hospital in England, stopped at the bedside of Lieut. John P. Maher and asked: "Where are you from?" Said Maher: "The Bronx." The Queen said she knew The Bronx was a borough of New York City, then asked how it got its name. When Maher could not answer, Lieut. General John C. H. Lee, the Queen's escort, offered $20 to anyone who could. An onlooker, Captain Bill Tourney, a 31-year-old Bronxite, spoke up: "It is named for a German or Dutch farmer . . . who settled there." He got the $20.*

King George VI lunched at Fifth Army advance headquarters as a guest of Lieut. General Mark Clark, along with Manhattan's Archbishop Spellman (see RELIGION) and the Allied commander in Italy, General Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander. Some 300 yards from the table, a U.S. doughboy stepped on a brace of German mines, which promptly exploded, killing the soldier. At His Majesty's table no one was hurt.

Lily Pons, on U.S.O. tour in the Near East, visited an Egyptian service canteen with her fellow troupers and husband, Conductor Andre Kostelanetz, who reported that slie had trouble figuring out the exchange of Egyptian piasters and U.S. dollars until she asked a bystander to help her. Wrote Kostelanetz: "He gladly did, and we learned afterwards that our 'financial straightener-outer' was . . . Farouk, King of Egypt."

Billy Rose, Broadway's squash-shaped supershowman, announced that with Shakespeare-wise Director Margaret Webster he was planning a splendiferous production of Henry VIII.

Politicos

Richard Wright, best-selling Negro novelist (Native Son) said to a New York Herald Tribune reporter that he was "ejected" from the Communist Party in 1937. Said he: "There was an irreconcilable gap. . . . I do not regard the Communists today as effective instruments for social change. . . . [They] have a terrible lot to learn about people. . . . What it amounts to is that they are narrow-minded, bigoted, intolerant and frightened of new ideas."

Frances P. Bolton, Ohio's comely Republican Congresswoman, arrived in London to begin a tour of U.S. Army medical bases in England and France in order to report on Army nurses "the way their mothers will understand." She gave a thought to the November election: "It would be very unfortunate if people here felt that a change of administration would change our foreign policy. . . . We [Republicans] are just as good Americans as the Democrats." She also paid womanly tribute to the British: "I have been so impressed by the way your women are taking care of their hair, keeping it waved and pretty."

Madame Chiang Kaishek, resting on Brazil's Brocoio Island off Rio de Janeiro (TIME, July 24), was reported inclined toward U.S.-style cooking. Restaurateur Alfredo Balbis, catering to her party, also said that though her diet forbids seafood, she demanded shrimp and got it. Other items in demand: Coca-Cola, mineral water, port,

Mohandas Gandhi, recuperating near Bombay from the effects of his latest protest fast against imprisonment, was rudely referred to in the House of Lords by rugged Scottish Viscount Elibank, who called him "the greatest bamboozler of the century."

Offspring

Gene Tierney, blue-eyed cinemactress and mother of a ten-months-old daughter, Daria (her husband is Army Lieut. Oleg Cassini, peacetime Hollywood dress designer), confided to New York Post Columnist Earl Wilson that she was "crazy about strong smells," added "I like to smell babies. Now there's a smell that ought to be bottled."

Rita Hayworth made it official that she was expecting a child in December, hoped that it would be a boy "just like his daddy--in fact, be another Orson Welles." Orson told her he wanted 17 children, but she said: "You know Orson--he always has to exaggerate a little. Three or four would be enough for me." To admirers in the 362nd Fighter Squadron Rita sent an autographed slip.

Mrs. Thomas E. Dewey and Mrs. John W. Bricker spent a homey afternoon talking to reporters at New York's Executive Mansion while their husbands talked campaign strategy (see U.S. AT WAR). They talked of the Dewey children, and Mrs. Bricker remarked on how nicely they "melted out of the room." Said Mrs. Dewey: "Oh, you're just being guestly, but it's very sweet of you." When the conversation got round to hobbies, Mrs. Bricker admitted that she collected early American glassware, but Mrs. Dewey said she had dropped her hobby: "When I was very young, I collected elephants, and look what it led to."

The Diligent! Quintuplets of Buenos Aires--Carlos, Franco, Maria Ester, Maria Fernanda and Maria Cristina--celebrated the completion of their first normal, healthy year (teething pains, an occasional cold) "full of zest," but with no smiles for the cameraman.

Special Services

Brigadier General Cornelius Vanderbilt III, late No. i U.S. clubman, posthumously appeared by proxy in Manhattan's Surrogate Court. The claim of $231,750, brought against his estate after his death in 1942 by Muriel Paterson, onetime showgirl, who charged that Vanderbilt had guaranteed her $750 a month for life for acting as hostess on his yacht and for "special services" rendered, was finally settled in full for $4,500.

Samuel Goldwyn was named a defendant in a $50,000 damage suit by blonde Cinemaspirant Lorraine Miller, who charged that he had damaged her reputation, lessened her earning power. Her claim: he had distributed to servicemen, without her consent, a scantily clad picture postcard of her under the name of "Diana Mumby, Samuel Goldwyn's Most Cuddlesome Blonde."

Joseph Barnes, world traveling foreign news editor of the New York Herald Tribune, just in by bomber from England, reported that he had to stand all the way from Iceland.

* History, which is rather uncertain, mentions a Jonas Bronk, or Bronck, either a Dutchman or Scandinavian, who was the first settler, around 1639,

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