Family Circles

Charles Spencer Chaplin, 56, was adjudged (by 11-to-1 vote of a California jury) the legal father of auburn-haired Joan Berry's 18-months-old daughter, Carol Ann. One juror's reason: "Mr. Chaplin overacted on the witness stand when he turned toward us and tried to charm us." This windup of the two-year court battle satisfied nobody. The comedian remained unconvinced, and blood specialists back him up. His ex-protegee considered the $75 a week awarded her for Carol Ann's support "ridiculous"; she had asked for $1,500 a month. Her lawyer, awarded $5,000 instead of a requested $50,000, exploded: "That little baby can't even live on $75 a week now. I don't know what she'll do when she gets older."

Dr. Arthur Holly Compton, University of Chicago physicist and 1927 Nobel Prizewinner, accepted the chancellorship of Washington University at St. Louis, thus becoming the third Compton brother to be a college president. Brother Karl is president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Brother Wilson is president of Washington State College (TIME, Feb. 12).

Jennifer Jones, Oscar-winning cinemactress, who postponed a divorce for 2 1/2 years because of urgent studio warnings that it might sully her spotless buildup for The Song of Bernadette, finally filed suit in Los Angeles against Cinemactor Robert Walker.

Faith Bacon, ecdysiast extraordinary (she has used fans, fawns, feathers, flowers), sued the University of California for three sexy, pseudo-Grecian statues left it by Founder Henry Douglas Bacon, from whom she claims descent. Her demand: either remove the statues (which she has never seen) from storage in a University basement, or give them to her. The University decided to give. Weight of the overwhelming gift: nine tons.

The Crystal Ball

Mohandas K. Gandhi cabled Eleanor Roosevelt from India: "Condolences on the death of your husband. Congratulations that this man of peace did not live to see the murder of peace."

Jo Davidson, bush-bearded sculptor of celebrities, voiced high hopes for the San Francisco conference, where he will record the world's peacemakers in clay: "We're going through the labor pains of a new civilization, and the child's going to be swell."

Dimitri Mitropoulos, tight-lipped conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony, denying rumors that he would replace Serge Koussevitzky as conductor of the Boston Symphony, playfully started a rumor of his own: "I am going to conduct a symphony ... in the Aleutians, and Koussevitzky is going to Berlin."

Major General Claire L. Chennault, 54-year-old 14th Air Force Commander, sent a deadpan application from China for a postwar pitching berth with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He pointed with pride to his opening one-hit, 6-to-0 shutout game in the 14th's softball season, explained: "It appears the war should be over soon, and I am looking for a place to settle down in my old age."

Purely Personal

Admiral William F. ("Bull") Halsey Jr., bellicose Third Fleet commander, let out one of his periodic anti-Jap bellows, this time for punishment of "all Japs guilty of war crimes without respect for rank or position." Paying his particular respects to Field Marshal Juichi Terauchi, "the beast ... in command during the death march of our prisoners on Bataan," he proposed: "For every one of our men who was murdered, officially or otherwise, a Jap officer two ranks higher should suffer the death penalty."

The Duke of Windsor, ex-Governor General of the Bahamas, reported househunting in summering socialite Newport, said no he had "no intentions of ... buying property in America. . . ."

Mae West, who has been her own best press agent as well as author-star of Catherine Was Great, continued her city-to-city commentary on life & love. In Detroit, she was pleased to announce that "the best way to hold a man is in your arms. ... In wartime, love is a little more hysterical. . . . These days I think love is being kicked around too much . . . it ain't lofty enough."

Identification Tags

William Randolph Hearst was named "the greatest humanitarian in the U.S.A." by Manhattan's Greenwich Village Humane League (for animals), which gave him the Paddy Reilly Honor Medal for his newspaper campaigns against vivisection. Last year the Medal went to Princess Elizabeth because she had promised that on her accession to the British throne all work horses would have a Sunday holiday.

Lauren ("The Look") Bacall showed Hollywood friends a new diamond bracelet with a small whistle attached. Said the inscription: "If you want anything -- just whistle-- H. Bogart." Adolf Hitler got a31-line biography in the 1945 British Who's Who -- complete with telephone number (Berlin 11-6191).

Joseph Stalin was allotted 45 lines, Winston Churchill, 68.

Major Winthrop Rockefeller, 32, fourth and only bachelor son of John D.

Rockefeller Jr., lost his individualistic Army-grown mustache when it was badly singed by flash burns in a Jap air attack off Okinawa. In a hospital on Guam with hand and face burns that will leave no scars, he pronounced himself "very lucky."

Native Sons

Count Felix von Luclcner, 58, famed "Sea Devil" scourge of Allied shipping in World War I, turned up behind the western front, trying to save his hometown, Halle, from Major General Terry Allen's attack. Previously reported as 1) an active Nazi and 2) in the party's bad graces because of his friendship for America, he exclaimed: "By Jove! I haven't been so happy since I ran the British blockade of 1916!" But General Allen's only terms were unconditional surrender, and three days later Halle fell.

J. B. Priestly, blunt-penned British novelist, decried his countrymen's subjection to American films--"to sit through trash that was never meant for them but for school children out in the Middle West." His emancipation plan: "stop this American . . . film drivel."

Kurt von Schuschnigg, ex-Chancellor of Austria who persisted in talking back to Hitler, was reported alive in a Nazi concentration camp at Oranienburg. Believed still alive in the dreaded Dachau camp was more outspoken Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemoeller.

Alfred E. Smith, late, longtime lover of the sidewalks of New York, was nostalgically remembered by G.I.s when the freighter bearing his name docked at Cherbourg. A burly MP asked if it was the ship containing a flagstone from the sidewalk in front of Al's old East Side home. Told that it was, he climbed aboard, reverently placed his foot on the stone. Next day some 200 New Yorkers in his outfit visited the ship--to see, touch, kiss their native "soil."

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