In & Out

Manhattan city editors sometimes refer to the New York Social Register as the Stud Book. A stud book lists well-bred horses; the Register (supposedly) lists well-bred people. But while a stud book follows a consistent adherence to blood lines, the Register is often oddly inconsistent.

Last week the 1948 edition of the little black book was out. As always, there were no explanations for its additions or subtractions. Marriage appeared to have pulled some people in, knocked others out.

A debutant and debutante:

P: William S. Paley, millionaire president of Columbia Broadcasting Co., by his marriage to Registerite Barbara Gushing Mortimer, one of the three beautiful daughters of Boston's late great surgeon, Harvey Gushing.

P: Daphne Skouras, daughter of 20th Century-Fox Chief Spyros Skouras, by her marriage to Oren Root Jr., socialite lawyer who organized the Willkie Clubs in 1940.

Some deletants and a deletante:

P: Henry J. (Bob) Topping Jr. for becoming newest (and fifth) husband of Cinemactress Arline Judge.

P: Mrs. James N. Hill, widow of the son of the great railroad builder, for marrying Charles Blevins Davis, friend of President Truman and onetime escort of Margaret Truman.

P: T. Burt McGuire Jr., Manhattan playboy, for becoming the fifth husband of Lillian Roth, former Ziegfeld star and subject of articles on how she conquered alcohol.

P: Dr. Norton S. Brown, internist, for marrying (third husband) Writer-Actress Ilka (In Bed We Cry) Chase.

Some unaccountably stayed put. Sample: Mrs. Maud K. Stevenson Henjes. Last March, when she was still Maud Stevenson and yachtsman Robert H. Henjes was only her "boyfriend" (her own term), she & he tiffed. The tiff wound up in a Long Island police station where Maud, stripped down to brassiere and half slip, bit and kicked a cop like nobody's business.

Cracked Hearst's Cholly Knickerbocker, whose social world, cafe society, is a cut below the Social Register's: "The joke of the whole thing . . . is that the Social Register has no more right to the vestige of authority it has assumed than our Chinese laundryman."

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