Aches & Pains

Italy's President Enrico de Nicola had a bunged-up nose and brow after a limousine-&-jeep collision near Rome (the President was riding in the limousine).

Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was "just fine" after he had his tonsils out at a Portland (Ore.) hospital. But he had a complaint: the traffic at rackety 19th Ave. and Lovejoy St., just outside his window, got him down.

In Paris, Virginia Hill, much-publicized girl friend of the late Gangster Bugsy Siegel (TIME, June 30), gave a performance of another sort. Playgirl Virginia, whom the press had taken to calling a "mystery girl," broke into the papers again by swallowing a few extra sleeping pills. It wasn't a real suicide attempt, doctors said; she hadn't swallowed enough. But the trimmings were something. She did it at the Ritz. She was found by "a French nobleman." She was wrapped in "something resembling a shroud." A friend displayed a posed picture of her reclining with lilies on her bosom. And at the hospital, when she had recovered her strength, she threw crockery at everybody and flushed her passport down the toilet. The U.S. Embassy thought it could get her another one right away.

Arts & Letters

The Americanization of Thomas Mann was complete: at 72, he had sold Hollywood (United Artists) his first screen story (done in collaboration)--The Woman of a Hundred Faces, something about an artist's model. To celebrate, the German-born Nobel Prizewinner returned to Europe--but not Germany--for the first time since 1939.

Hedda Hopper, overheated and exhausted, suddenly cut short her cross-country "grassroots" columning and scooted back to Hollywood, but not before taking a soulful look at the Rockies. "Rolling along perfect roads, we hit the Rockies, climbed them and took the Great Divide in stride," she rhapsodized. "In the midst of all its majestic beauty, I kept thinking how Lassie would have loved it."

Doris Duke Cromwell took pen in hand for Town & Country and served its readers a description of famed Shangrila, her marble & granite palace in Hawaii. She also included a bit of lowdown on why its architecture was "a Spanish-Moorish-Persian-Indian complex." When she "fell in love with Hawaii . . ." she explained, "a Mogul-inspired bedroom and bathroom . . . was being completed for me in India, so there was nothing to do but have it shipped to Hawaii and build a house around it."

Brass & Cymbal

In West Dennis, Mass., wistful-eyed Cinemactress Luise Rainer, two-time Oscar winner, applied her talents to the Bible. The pastor of the local Community Church had her over from a straw-hat theater to read the scripture at services. Result: an overflow crowd of worshipers. Actress Rainer chose Corinthians I, 13--"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. . . ." She wore a grey dress and a light blue scarf, and scored a smash. Sample critical judgments: ". . . gained a maximum of feeling . . . gave it everything she had . . . best performance of her career."

In Atlanta, 98 robed Ku Klux Klansmen attended Baptist church services. It was nothing to get excited about, said Georgia's Grand Dragon, Dr. Samuel Green: "During war times we couldn't get any proper material to make our robes out of, so we didn't accept invitations. . . . We always use Indian head material and I am just getting some now. . . . If there is anything we want Klansmen to do it is to go to church. . . . The Klan is built on the 12th chapter of Romans."*

Profit & Loss

Hollywood, observed Rene Clair, France's No. 1 cinema director before the war, is "an empty, glass town in a silly fairy-tale world . . . nothing but a bank. . . . Money is all that counts there. . . . For prestige, initiative, invention, one has to look to England, Italy and France. . . ." Occasion for Director Clair's blast: he had just returned (with blonde wife Bronja and black poodle Bijou) from a year in France, to resume movie work in Hollywood.

Betty Grable posed with ten-week-old daughter Jessica James for daughter's first picture. A report to the SEC showed that mother's salary was tops at 20th Century-Fox last year: $299,333.

Errol Flynn, who also earns a living with his looks, agreed to do better by his first wife, Lili Damita, who rarely gets in the papers any more. She had him in court for falling behind on his alimony. Now, Wage-Earner Flynn must rustle up $1,000 a week until he catches up (he is $6,000 behind), plus $12,000 for the income taxes Lili paid on her alimony last year--besides the usual $1,500-a-month alimony.

* Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love. . . . Live peaceably with all men. . .--Romans 12.

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