Salon Keepers

Back to Manhattan from her first postwar inspection of her villa in Capri came best-dressed Mrs. Harrison Williams, in what the tabloid Daily Mirror called "a pale beige wool dress, with a deeper-than-usual neckline and longer-than-usual skirt." How had she found things? Said she: "A great many things are gone, including a most wonderful wine cellar. Not a bottle remains." But she kept her chin up. "C'est la guerre," said Mrs. Williams.

Ready for the Republican renaissance was a Washington hostess who had been there all along: Alice Roosevelt Longworth. The onetime "Princess Alice," who came out at the White House, was married to Speaker Nicholas Longworth, and dominated capital society when it was mostly Republican, lived alone now at 62 in her mansion that "smells of 1910." But she had been no recluse. Her "gatherings" had continued; only the publicity had failed. So her plans, said she, were simply "to continue with business as usual, pleasure as usual--whatever you want to call it."

It looked now as if Raymond Duncan, brother of the late Isadora and undisputed leader of the homespun Attic cult in Paris, would be busy with salons on two continents. In Manhattan for his first visit in 15 years, Raymond was charmed with the place, planned to shuttle back & forth between Paris and Manhattan hereafter. "New York," said 72-year-old Raymond, his feet in sandals, his pageboy bob in a silvery fillet, "is like an old California mining town. ..." While he was at it he discussed miners. "The miners have a gun . . . and the public has to give up! ... Unions are fascist." He suggested living without coal.

Muscles

In Beverly Hills, Alfred Letourner, onetime French cycling champ, got a $200 fine for taking a nick out of a lady friend's hip. He had not meant to cut the lady (he said). Upset because of her friendship with another, he had just taken a few distraught slashes at her bed, and she happened to be in it. Day after he was fined Letourner was arrested again, charged with creating a disturbance at Barney's Beanery, where his old friend worked. She had married the other fellow. That time, Letourner (said his lawyer) was just trying to patch things up.

In Los Angeles, the Brooklyn Dodgers' Manager Leo ("Lippy") Durocher, fresh from signing a new contract (and telling the world that the Yankees' Larry MacPhail had tried to hire him away from the Dodgers, which MacPhail denied), got a friendly welcome at the airport from Cinemactress Laraine Day, who i) bussed him fondly, 2) announced to the panting press that they were just friends. Promptly another old friend, Powers Model Edna Ryan, now a little confused, rose and pinned a label on him: the Artful Dodger.

Past Masters

In Mexico City, human bones in a crystal casket (inside three other containers), discovered sealed in the wall of an abandoned church, were certified by antiquarians to be those of Conqueror Hernando Cortes. Promptly a squabble arose. Should they be given a Catholic burial? Did they belong to the nation? Outgoing President Manuel Avila Camacho settled it. The bones would be returned to the abandoned church and the church made a national monument. In Buenos Aires another squabble arose over another late Spaniard: famed Composer Manuel de Falla (The Three-Cornered Hat), dead only a fortnight (TIME, Nov.25). The Spanish Embassy announced that the body would be repatriated to Spain. But De Falla, protested Spanish exiles, had fled his country because he could not stomach Franco. While the point was argued, three cops were posted at the composer's tomb to guard against a body snatch.

Just Folks

Errol Flynn was sued for $35,000 by a young seaman who said he had been accidentally harpooned by someone on Flynn's yacht and then not properly cared for. The Duchess of Leinster, onetime Gaiety Girl Denise Orme* and now sixtyish, was fined with daughter Llydia in London for having 30 counterfeit clothing coupons. And Heiress Barbara Hutton, back from her villa in Tangier, had scarcely checked into the Paris Ritz before a handsome blond count had to tramp on a rumor. There was "no question of any marriage" with her, declared Count Alain d'Etudeville, head of Moet et Chandon (champagne). Said he with more precision than gallantry: "I've known Barbara for nearly 20 years. . ."

Hon.'s Here & there, a statesman preferred not to make an issue of it: Trygve Lie had his chauffeur plead guilty of speeding (and pay a $15 fine) in New Rochelle, N. Y., let it be known that he had finally decided not to "press the principle of immunity [for U.N. personnel] in the instant case. . . ."

To Sir Stafford Crlpps, who tries to make Britons happy about rationing, came a letter from a woman who professed to have been touched by the difficulties he was having. Cripps had remarked that he was always tangling his toes in the holes in his old bed sheets. The woman offered a helping hand: she actually knew a place, said she, where a fine pair of sheets could be bought, for $25.20. "My sheets," replied Cripps, gently reversing his field, "though mended and turned, are quite adequate to my needs, and I would not dream of having a new pair yet."

General Douglas MacArthur, looking uncommonly trim and young for his age (66), squared his shoulders and joined Red Army Major General Kislenko at the Russian Embassy in Tokyo. There he lent his five-star person to an important celebration. Occasion: the 29th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

--At his 72nd birthday party, Winston Churchill's 60-lb. cake in token of his catholicity of taste in headgear, wore 32 assorted little hats. Herbert Morrison, Lord President of the Council, drew a distressed tut from the British trade paper, Tailor and Cutter, which ran two pictures of him. "Take the picture above," wrote the editor. "Quite nice. The stripes run parallel to the edge of the lapel. . . . Now look at the larger photograph. Oh! ... the trousers are too short. . . . The over coat is not a very pleasant sight. . . . And why is[he] so careless with his buttons and flaps?" Muttered Tailor and Cutter: ";We are very disappointed in Mr. Herbert Morrison ... he is a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

* Not to be confused with the late first Duchess May Etheridge, who was also a Gaiety Girl.

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