New Horizons

Lauren Bacall, newest of sultry cinema sirens (To Have and Have Not), arrived in Manhattan for a well-timed "rest," topped the tabloids with a well pressagented romance. Her leading man, Cinema Tough Guy Humphrey Bogart, happened to be staying at the Hotel Gotham, where she put up. To swarming newsmen, she confided: "Bogey is a real swell guy. We have a lot of fun together. . . ." Bogart, currently separated from his wife, Mayo ("Sluggy") Methot, got in character to pronounce his opinion of Lauren: "Baby's . . . a real Joe." Bogey and Baby have just completed their second picture, The Big Sleep.

Franklin Pierce (F.P.A.) Adams, odds-&-ends expert on radio's Information Please, learned that a bill had been introduced in the Connecticut legislature for the appointment of a poet laureate, promptly declared himself a candidate. He said he "favored a front-porch campaign.

Dr. William Beebe, lean, hardy writer-zoologist, who has spent many a long, chilly hour in a bathysphere a half mile below the ocean surface, and has experienced the hardships of jungle living, prepared for an expedition to the Venezuela tropical forests, admitted he was "tired of roughing it." For his headquarters, Beebe reported that he had found a building originally designed as a hotel, smack in the heart of the jungle, explained: "A scientist can't study nearly as well if he's cold and wet or . . . tired."

Carmencita Franco, only daughter of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, officially discarded childhood on her 18th birthday, unveiled her Spanish-style beauty (see cut) at a debutante ball in Madrid's El Pardo palace.

Upton Sinclair, best-selling socialistic novelist and pamphleteer, onetime politician and part-time prophet, gloomily predicted a postwar period of "hilarious prosperity" directly followed by a worldwide deflation, resulting in 30 or 40,000,000 jobless in the U.S. alone.

William S. Hart, hard-riding hero of the silent horse operas, who last month gave $50,000 for a park and museum in Hollywood, shelled out another $100,000--to the Connecticut Humane Society for a memorial to his sister: a shelter for stray dogs and cats in Westport, Conn.

Anne Hutchinson, religious enthusiast who was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1638 for feeling good (called Antinomianism by Puritan divines), was the object of a bill introduced in the Massachusetts State Legislature. Object: to revoke her banishment and allow her to "return" to ban-bound Boston, where she is the only woman ever honored by a statue.

Facts of Life

Alben Berkley showed up in the Senate with a big black patch over his left eye, explained that he had undergone treatment for an ulcer on the cornea. Said the Senate Majority Leader: "The doctor told me I should wear the patch to protect my eye against wind. Soooo--1 thought I ought to wear it to the Senate."

Lillian Hellman, most prosperous of leftish U.S. playwrights, arrived in London after three months in the U.S.S.R., hotly sounded off against the "Red baiters" who claim that Russia is preparing for a third world war. Said Russophile Hellman: "Anything you have read about the devastation of Russia is only a half-truth. Nobody else knows what devastation means. Nobody else knows what work or privation mean until you see the Russian sacrifices."

Pablo Picasso came out second best in a discussion with his good friend, witty Jean Cocteau, super-modernist poet and esthete-in-waiting to Parisian advance-guard artists. Asked why he had joined the Communist Party, Painter Picasso said: I want to break the trusts." Cocteau: "Delicious! You who are yourself the great painting trust."

Beniamino Gigli, pompous Italian tenor often accused by his fellow Romans of collaborating with Nazis and Fascists (TIME, June 19 et seq.), was examined at his own request by the newly formed Council of Musicians, who completely cleared him of all such charges.

Errol Flynn, 35, whose off-screen amours have made bigger news than his cinema romances, was reported the father of a daughter, born last month in Mexico City. The baby's mother was Nora Eddington, 20, onetime cigar counterwoman, who shared notoriety with Flynn shortly after his rape trial (TIME, Aug. 23, 1943). Asked if he were Nora's husband and the father of her baby, Flynn said: "No comment." Warners' publicity agents then issued a statement quoting their star as saying: "Sure, I'm married and I like it, and it's nobody's business. . . ." Weary reporters promptly heard from Flynn again; he said he had not made a statement, would have "nothing further to say."

Men of Merit

Lieut. Colonel Evans Fordyce Carlson, hard-bitten leader of Carlson's Marine Raiders, whose chest is one of the world's most bemedaled (19 decorations and campaign ribbons), received the Legion of Merit, for service in the battle of Saipan, where he was wounded (TIME, July 31).

Lieut. Colonel John Boettiger, son-in-law of Franklin Roosevelt and peacetime publisher of Hearst's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, received the Legion of Merit for "exceptionally meritorious conduct" as an A.M.G. executive officer during the invasion of Italy.

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