Just Deserts

Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery carried a pair of worn boots into Hoby's Bootshop in London's West End on Friday, asked for repairs by "next Tuesday . . . I'll be needing them in Germany." Hoby's--recalling that Wellington wore his Hoby boots at Waterloo, that Nelson died in his at Trafalgar--broke its two-to-three-weeks-for-repairs rule, promised delivery.

Arleen Whelan, 28, flame-haired, green-eyed stage & screen starlet and ex-manicurist, got undivided attention from a committee of 65 illustrators, who awarded her a wellrounded, unequivocal title: "the most perfect all-over beauty of all time." Runner-up: the Venus de Milo.

Joseph E. Davies, rich, Russia-fond ex-U.S. Ambassador (Mission to Moscow), was awarded the Order of Lenin for his "successful activities in strengthening Soviet-American relations. . . ."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose likeness will appear on bonds for the eighth war-loan drive, will also join three other U.S. Presidents commemorated in the nation's small change: the Roosevelt portrait on all new dimes will keep company with Washington (quarters), Jefferson (nickels), Lincoln (pennies).

Viacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, Russia's sharp-eyed, correct Commissar for Foreign Affairs, was rated the top "glamor boy" of the San Francisco conference by Britain's pert Delegate Ellen Wilkinson, Labor M.P. Her one qualification: Molotov (unlike Britain's Eden and America's Stettinius) was not really very glamorous "to look at."

Robert E. Hannegan, who made the grade from Missouri machine politician to Democratic National Chairman to U.S. Postmaster General, assured 200 Democratic Congressmen of his generous nature: "I believe that Republicans are entitled to all the good things in life--except jobs in public office."

Fun & Games

Lieut. General William Hood Simpson, immaculate, billiard-bald Ninth Army commander, was the most rumpled guest at a victory-celebration banquet in Germany: Soviet officers honored him with a triple toss ceilingward, the stouthearted Russian version of "three cheers."

The Gaekwar of Baroda, 36, plump, pleasure-bent potentate who rules 3,000,000 Indians, stirred up a tempest in Bombay teapots when he got top air priority to fly to England with his aide-de-camp for "health reasons." Scores of long-service British officers, waiting wearily for passage, on the crowded homeward bound planes, knew that the Gaekwar was going to England to race his stable, that his "aide-de-camp" was his champion jockey.

Pope Pius XII, in good health and high spirits, told 5,000 Italian sportsmen that sport based on fair play "elevates the spirit above small-mindedness, dishonesty and trickery" . . . develops a Christian domination of the human body--which the Church regards as "a masterpiece of God ... a temple of the Holy Spirit."

Jascha Herfetz, one of the world's great violin virtuosos, came off second-best at General Omar N. Bradley's little entertainment in Germany for a group of visiting Soviet generals. After Heifetz and Cinemactor Mickey Rooney had drawn polite applause, three unidentified G.I.s and three WACs went into a groovey jitterbug routine that sent the delighted Russians right out of this world.

Dubious Bets

Fritz Kuhn, ex-fiihrer of the German-American Bund, interned by the U.S. as an enemy alien since his parole from a two and a half-to-five-year prison sentence (for stealing Bund funds), was ordered deported to Germany. Naturalized in 1934, his citizenship was canceled in 1943 (he took the oath of allegiance "with mental reservations").

Knut Hamsun, 85, Nobel Prizewinning Norwegian novelist (Growth of the Soil, The Road Leads On) and pro-Nazi intellectual, was reported to have suffered a nervous breakdown upon learning of the German collapse. Once before the old man was made ill by wartime: a stroke overtook him in 1942 when countrymen who had once loved his books mailed him thousands of dog-eared copies after he advised them to "throw away your rifles. . . " The Germans are fighting for us and now are crushing England's tyranny over us and all neutrals."

The Cloudy Future

Sidney Hillman, agile chairman of the C.I.O.'s ambitious Political Action Committee, made the most circumspect, warily-worded political prediction of the week: the P.A.C. will be active in the 1948 presidential election--"an election that could give Harry Truman the Presidency for a second term."

Kirsten Flagstad, 49, whose famed Wagnerian ho-yo-to-hos have not resounded in the Metropolitan Opera since she joined her husband in Nazi-held Norway four years ago, planned to return to the U.S. "to see my daughter [by a previous marriage -- Mrs. Elsa Dusenberry of Bozeman, Mont.] if not to sing." Flagstad managed to keep herself politically neutral by refusing to sing for Nazi audiences, but her wealthy quisling husband, Henry Johansen, was less successful: his one-week imprisonment in a Gestapo concentration camp last February was described by Norwegian patriots as a "face-saving maneuver," during which he lived in the camp commandant's quarters.

Heinrich Himmler, missing, bloody boss of the liquidated Gestapo, was no longer a matter of concern to Winston Churchill, who observed: "I expect he will turn up somewhere in this world or the next, and will be dealt with by appropriate local authorities."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.