The Literary Flourish

Field Marshal Viscount Wavell, affable Viceroy of India, veteran of Libya and Ethiopia, edited an anthology of verse. The title: Other Men's Flowers.

Orson Welles, 29, boy prodigy of theater, radio and cinema, took on a prodigious job: recording the entire Bible. Reading 15 minutes a day for a year, he expects to put the 773,746 words of a "slightly rewritten" King James Version on Decca records. He has already finished the Song of Solomon.

George Santayana, 81-year-old poet, philosopher, novelist (The Last Puritan), was awarded Columbia University's quinquennial Nicholas Murray Butler gold medal for his four metaphysical books, Realms of Being. The award will have to go to Rome where, since 1941, he has shunned war in a convent, finding that "in solitude it is possible to love mankind."

Whisperings of Spring

Shirley Temple, nearly 17, officially began the romantic phase of a cinema career which has been minutely publicized since childhood. Her announcement of her engagement to blond, 6 ft. 2 in. A.A.F. Sergeant John George Agar, 24, was closely followed by a parenthetical announcement from her parents: "Shirley and John have promised . . . not... to get married for two years, possibly three. . . ."

Leopold Stokowski, pale-maned maestro, since 1937 the great & good friend of Greta Garbo, was reported making nightly long-distance calls to Gloria Vanderbilt di Cicco, who just inherited $4,500,000. "Friends" said that she would join him in Mexico as soon as her Reno decree comes through. Gloria and the maestro maintained a Garbo-like silence.

Billy Rose, jigger-sized impresario of jumbo-sized shows which provide him with a jeroboam-sized bankroll, peeled off $29,500 for silver banqueting and tea services at a Manhattan auction.

A Matter of Opinion

Paul V. McNutt, platinum-haired War Manpower Commissioner, recommended "extermination of the Japanese--in toto" The onetime U.S. High Commissioner to the Philippines explained: "I know the Japanese people."

Irene Castle McLaughlin, who tripped her way to fame during World War I with such sprightly dances as the Maxixe and the Castle Walk, was completely out of sympathy with World War II's jitterbugging: "It's not dancing--it belongs to the realm of athletics . . . they look like a netful of fish."

Sergeant Joe Louis, heavyweight boxing champion now doing physical fitness and morale work at Camp Shanks, N.Y., philosophized: the war has "got to do some good. ... If everybody come out of the war with one new friend like he never had before, that's a lot." Reminded of the money he might have made in civilian life from the 97 bouts he has staged for overseas troops, he observed: "Heck, lots of soldiers have give up a lot more than Joe Louis have."

Things Will Be Different, Now

Lord Haw-Haw (British Traitor William Joyce) suddenly went off the air after nearly six years of blaring Nazi propaganda at Britain. Reason: his station shut up when the British Seventh Armored Division entered Bremen's suburbs.

Helen Hayes, ladylike leading lady of the stage, who once denounced the closing of Manhattan's burlesque theaters ("an encroachment on the rights of free Americans"), was surprised to see a small box ad for her currently touring Harriet merged with a burlesque comedy ad in a Los Angeles newspaper. The result: "Helen Hayes, in Harriet, hot as a robot bomb, A Honey in the Hay."

Harry Hopkins, gaunt, hollow-eyed adviser-assistant to Franklin Roosevelt, got a salary raise (from $10,000 to $15,000 a year) as of last July n. Paid out of the war emergency funds assigned to the President by Congress, he now gets the same salary he once got as Secretary of Commerce.

Barbara Hutton Grant, five-&-dime heiress, surprise-partied her newlywed personal maid and chauffeur at her Bel-Air, Calif, estate with a guest list of 50 chefs, valets, butlers, maids. Cinemactor Gary Grant, the hostess' estranged husband, sent his valet with a check for the happy couple. Hit of the evening--aside from the mistress' serving--was the little performance of sleight-of-hand tricks by Edwards, butler to Lady Mendl. "Miss Hutton did practically everything but wash the dishes," observed one breathless, gratified guest. The party over, "Miss Hutton" and her house guest, the Baroness de Rothschild, went back into the kitchen and even did the dishes.

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