Discoveries, Homebodies, French Footnotes
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Thomas Edmund Dewey had their family trees traced by Mutual Broadcasting System's "Answer Man," who discovered that ten generations back they have common ancestors,* are thus seventh cousins once removed.
Miss America of 1944 was chosen from eleven finalists at the annual Atlantic City contest. She is Venus Ramey, a 19-year-old secretary who entered as ''Miss Washington, D.C.," became the first redhead to win the title. Height: 5 ft. 7 in. Weight: 125 lbs. Bust: 36 1/2. Waist: 25. Hips: 37 1/2. Thigh: 19 1/2.
Ernie Pyle announced that he was coming home from the battlefields of France. Said he: "I've been 29 months overseas . . . nearly a year in the front lines. . . . My spirit is wobbly and my mind is confused. . . . All of a sudden it seemed to me that if I heard one more shot or saw one more dead man, I would go off my nut." Frail, brave Columnist Pyle added that, as soon as he is rested up, he hopes to push off for the Pacific.
Andre Malraux, 49-year-old revolutionary French novelist (Man's Fate, Man's Hope), International Brigade air squadron leader in the Spanish Civil War, tank corps veteran of the 1940 Battle of France, reported killed by the Nazis, turned up again as leader of 1,000 Maquis in the Limoges district. He had been captured by the Gestapo, freed by a patriot raid, and served as a liaison officer between the F.F.I, and the British.
Fred Astaire reached London on the first stop of a U.S.O. tour, was embraced by his sister and greatest alltime dancing partner, Adele, Lady Cavendish, now serving in the American Red Cross.
Homebodies
Loretta Young, who paid $8,500 down on a ten-room Hollywood house owned by Benjamin ("Bugsy") Siegel, longtime friend to bigtime gangsters, was sued by him for the balance of $85,000. She explained that the deal depended on Bugsy's eliminating all the house's "termites, fungus and dry rot." Her claim: "Siegel has refused to spend more than $250 for elimination of termites. It's going to cost a great deal more than that. . . ."
Charles Augustus Lindbergh, back from his tour of the South Pacific, rented an 18-room, brick and timber house in Greens Farms, Conn., a quiet section of Westport, convenient to the four United Aircraft Corp. plants where he works as a consulting engineer. The house, on 14 acres of land, faces a road, is only 200 yards from his nearest neighbor.*
French Footnotes
Lieut. General George S. Patton Jr. saw fit to write General George C. Marshall to deny the widely printed story that he had landed in Normandy waving a $1,000 bill and betting that he would beat Lieut. General Omar N. Bradley and Field Marshal Sir Bernard L. Montgomery to Paris.* Said Patton: "I arrived in Normandy incognito. I have never seen a $1,000 bill."
Katharine Cornell got into battle dress, left London for France to appear before U.S. soldiers in her oldtime smash The Barretts of Wimpole Street.
General Charles de Gaulle sent a telegram to his onetime colleague on the Committee of National Liberation, General Henri Honore Giraud, who had been shot in the cheek outside his villa near Oran by a drunken Senegalese sentry. The shot broke several of Giraud's teeth. General de Gaulle called for a "thorough examination" of the "outrage."
Elsa Maxwell fluttered Hollywood last week with a party celebrating French liberation. She had sent out the invitations in early August, while the Allies were still in Normandy. Said she: "I just had a hunch--anyway, France is very close to my heart. Some of my best parties were given there." Among the entertainers: Pianist Artur Rubinstein, Ballerina Alicia Markova, Funnyman Danny Kaye, Songstress Judy Garland. Cinemactor Charles Boyer (reciting La Marseillaise), Elsa herself (playing the Star-Spangled Banner). Among the guests: blue-haired Internationalist Lady Mendl, red-haired Greer Garson, black-haired Authoress Anita Loos, cigar-ash-grey-color haired Evalyn Walsh McLean (with her Hope diamond).
* Their common ancestors are Richard and Hepsibah Ford Lyman of Northampton, Mass., whose daughter, in 1662, married Josiah Dewey, great-great-great-great-great-grandfather of Candidate Dewey. The Lymans' son was the great-great-great-great-grandfather of Katharine Robbins Lyman, who married Warren Delano, maternal grandfather of the President. *When he left the U.S. in 1935, Lindbergh first rented an out-of-the-way 500-year-old house in Sevenoaks, Kent County, England, later bought the barren, out-of-the-way Breton isle of Illiec, lived there for six months near his great & good friend, Scientist Alexis Carrel, now reported held by the F.F.I, as an alleged collaborationist. * In Hollywood, Producer Hunt Stromberg announced plans for a motion picture based on Patton's life, to be called Blood and Guts.
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