Shock Troupe

Gloria Swanson, svelte survivor of the silent screen and five marriages, survived a New York City taxicab crash that bowled one of the cabs over. Injuries to Siren Swanson: an egg on the brow, a skewgee decor.

Maurice (Hamlet) Evans, resting at Tupper Lake, N.Y. from soliloquies, suffered a little outrageous fortune at his summer home--he stumbled off the porch in the dark and cracked two ribs.

Father finally shocked Boston. The censor decided that the fuming head of the family in Life with Father must no longer cry, "Oh, God!"--though one Father or another had already sent the cry ringing through nearly 300 Boston performances.

Rhapsody in Blue

John Jacob Astor III, 34, plum-shaped posthumous son of the Colonel* and half-brother of Vincent, was having a time with the Manhattan newspapers. They were breaking out all over with photos of a symmetrical 18-year-old girl in suburban Philadelphia, and stuff about her heartbreak. The girl, Virginia Jacobs, called him "Jackims." He was supposed to have had her on the qui vive since she was 15, but now she could not find him. She said he had talked of marrying her and "going to Paris, where we'd have lots of children" --that is, if he ever got a divorce from Wife No. 2. He had been just too extravagant, Virginia's mother told the newspapers. Mother had had to put her foot down: "Not mink, I told him. . . . He begged so hard, I finally allowed him to buy her a seven-skin beaver . . . $1,500. . . ." Suddenly the wind shifted. Said lovelorn Virginia to the newspapermen: "I've changed my mind."

Barbara Hutton's dashing friend, Freddie McEvoy of the Errol Flynn set, faced a flying visit from his second wife and their 15-month-old daughter, just as Dime-Store Heiress Hutton's divorce from Gary Grant finally became final. Said Mrs. Irene Wrightsman McEvoy, between hops from California to Paris (where Freddie and Miss Hutton coincided): rumors that Freddie and the heiress would marry had "nothing to do with it"--she just wanted to know if she herself was still Mrs. McEvoy. Once he had said he had divorced her, but now he said he had not. "Personally, I don't care," said she. "But I want to know."

Couture

Schiaparelli figured that women would be hobbled much of the time this season. "Nobody will be able to get out of bed before 5 in the afternoon," said she. "There are practically no dresses designed to wear before that time. . . ."

Paris' fall fashion shows opened, and Schiaparelli's outstanding contribution proved to be a bustle--a bustle on almost everything. Molyneux's favorite colors sounded like sublimations: butter yellow, burnt orange, light mustard. Favorite couturiere of the boulevardiers was doubtless Mlle. Alixt: she had daytime dresses with necklines clear to the waistline.

Pleasures & Palaces

Princess Juliana of The Netherlands, mother of three, all girls, was again in an interesting condition. As a delicately euphemistic palace announcement put it, the Princess "for a joyful reason has to restrict her activities." Stolid Netherlanders, under petticoat rule since 1890, started hoping for a royal boy.

Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm Hohenzollern, like everybody else, was house-hunting. Oh, he still had his 80-room castle near Hechingen, but it was "too impractical." He wanted a farm. And he had other worries: his sons. Mused 64-year-old "Willie," who has principally served his country by waiting to be called back to rule it: "You know, the Princes should take up some kind of employment."

The Duke of Windsor's farm near High River, Alberta, still awaited him after five years, but neighboring Albertans didn't care if he never came back. Roving Columnist Cornelius Vanderbilt prodded the natives about the Duke, reported some shocking responses: "Who's he, mister?" "No one in Canada in their right mind has had anything decent to say about him as long as I can remember."

Animal Farm

Freddie Bartholomew, willowy ex-child-actor, now 22 and a married man, whistled like mad for an hour along a busy Manhattan street, finally gave up. A $50 reward for the return of Mitsou, his lost red chow, brought his pet back next day.

Eleanor Roosevelt, who slept in a tourist cabin last month when a Maine hotel barred Fala, got advance assurance this time from a hotel in Albany, N.Y.: Fala would get the big hello, with special dog biscuit. Before she arrived in the city to keynote the state Democratic Convention --her accident-blackened eyes almost healed, her new teeth installed (see cut)--she gave a vigorous answer to a tired old question. "A long while ago," said she, "I said that I would not run for any office. That holds. I'm one of the few people, apparently, who mean what they say, because nobody seems to believe you. I really mean what I say. I have said it over and over again. I really mean what I say."

Waxworks

Charles G. Dawes, Vice President under Coolidge, reached 81 but unlike his usual practice, uttered no utterance.

Charles F. Kettering, inventor and General Motors research chief, reached 70 in Loudonville, Ohio. The town's population (2,300) doubled with visitors, who saw a pageant, sang Happy Birthday, watched Kettering cut an 80-lb. cake. His message: "A man must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere."

Carl Sandburg, 68-year-old poet and all-out Lincoln biographer, squared himself for a faintly eerie tribute from his admirers. In Galesburg, Ill., the Carl Sandburg Association had restored the little cottage where he was born, and next month the shrine would be dedicated.

James Clark McReynolds, late retired Supreme Court Justice, was buried in Elkton, Ky., as his will meticulously directed--"westward of the family monument, head near the center, feet away from it." Among the gruff octogenarian bachelor's bequests: $10,000 to a woman acquaintance, $10,000 to a friend's daughter, $10,000 to Centre College of Danville, Ky., to "promote instruction of girls in domestic affairs."

*Down with the Titanic in 1912.

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