"Unless a woman can earn $4,000 a year--or maybe $5,000," declared ex-Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, "I think it is absurd, antisocial, and uneconomic for her to work outside the home."
"Many women, as well as men, are physically clean," mused Columnist Elsa Maxwell rather abruptly, "and although they may bathe twice a day they somehow fail to look any cleaner than if they hadn't bathed. Now why does this particularity exist in the human race?" She didn't say why.
"When I made my first success," declared low-moaning Torchsinger Libby Holman, thinking back nearly 20 years, "I really didn't know what I was doing. I suppose my voice had a natural quality. . . ." Now, after years of on-&-off retirement, she was singing in a Manhattan nightclub. "Today, I have studied and really feel I understand . . ." said she gravely to an interviewer. "I think so few people know anything about the music that is indigenous to their own country."
Surrealist Salvador Dali, filling in for Columnist Leonard Lyons, told the world about his surrealist friendship with Movie Producer Jack Warner. When they first met, since neither spoke the other's language, they communicated by simply saying, "Petite marmite!" Dali went on: "Every time that this same idea mysteriously put our two souls in communication, one or the other of us ... would pronounce the magic phrase, 'Petite Marmite!' ... On moonlight nights we used to ... visit a gigantic spider. . . . From time to time I get a telegram which says 'Spider,' and I wire right back, 'Petite Marmite.' Then I usually get another wire . . . with just the word 'Petite.' And thus our friendship goes on, forever unalterable, since the thing that breaks up relationships between two people is usually an excess of words."
The Bended Knee
Nelson Rockefeller, 39-year-old elder brother of groom-of-the-year Winthrop, won a citation from the National Conference of Christians and Jews, for nice work in the field of human relations.
Harold ("Pie") Traynor, Pittsburgh Pirates' great third baseman and hitter of the '20s and '30s (his lifetime batting average: .320), was admitted to the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, N.Y., with the late, great Yankee pitcher Herb Pennock.
Eleanor Steber, 31-year-old Metropolitan Opera soprano, was summoned to Florida's Southern College (Lakeland) to be made an honorary Doctor of Music.
Bernard De Voto, 51, Harper's columnist and literary historian (Mark Twain's America, Minority Report), won appointment to the Department of the Interior's Advisory Board on National Parks, Historic Sites, Buildings and Monuments.
Thomas J. Watson, 74-year-old president of International Business Machines, not only held his own in Who's Who. (where he occupies more space than anybody else) but added 46 lines to his autobiographical contribution in the new edition, bringing the total up to an impressive 201.
Harry S. Truman was adjudged "the most distinguished alumnus of this industry" by the National Association of Retail Clothiers and Furnishers.
Kith & Kin
In Los Angeles, Henry J. Kaiser Jr., 31-year-old son of the industrialist, was ordered by Superior Court to pay $1,000-a-month temporary support to his estranged wife and two children while she fought him for a divorce.
In Alamosa, Colo., Kit Carson III, grandson of the Indian fighter, announced that he was planning to quit his job in a furniture store and open a trading post of his own.
In Manhattan, Faye Emerson Roosevelt, wife of Elliott, began rehearsing for her Broadway debut next month, in a revival of Ferencz Molnar's The Play's the Thing. Her part: the only female in a cast of nine.
In Vienna, Joseph Mayerhofer, little-noted foster brother of Hitler, was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment by a People's Court. The onetime colonel in the Brown Shirts was found guilty of having been a Nazi.
Profit & Loss
General Dwight Eisenhower finally climbed into civvies, in plenty of time for the Easter parade. For the press, he sat still in a neat-but-not-gaudy, double-breasted grey worsted (see tut), while Mrs. Eisenhower fussed happily with a less conservative tie.
The Duchess of Valencia, who speaks her monarchist mind in public, was out about $45,000. That was the latest fine levied against her by the Franco cabinet. The duchess, a dark-eyed beauty who was once fined for making monarchist noises in a tea shop, was charged this time with inciting a college-boy rebellion.
Marijke, youngest daughter of The Netherlands' Princess Juliana, celebrated her first birthday in the palace at Soest-dijk, surrounded by gifts (see cut) from distant admirers: the Dutch troops in Indonesia.
The Duke of Windsor was temporarily poorer by $20,000. A fire on his ranch in
Alberta, Canada destroyed 24 head of purebred Shorthorn cattle; but the loss was covered by insurance.
In & Out
Arrived: Prince Baudouin, 17-year-old son of Belgium's exiled King Leopold; in Miami, from Cuba. The prince quickly informed the press that he was not interested in girls--he had dropped over to "extend his education."
Arrived: junketing Columnist Earl Wilson; at the Ernest Hemingway farm outside Havana. Among the Wilson news flashes to the home folks: that the Hemingways now have 22 cats in their house, all in one room, and "Sure," says Hemingway, "we're going to call the room 'the cat house.'
Moved: Visitor Joe Louis & wife; from a fashionable Park Lane apartment in London to other diggings. The Park Lane suite ($360 a week) had its advantages--three living rooms, two dining rooms, six bedrooms, seven servants and a butler--but the Louises found it chilly.
Departed: Hon. Michael Astor, little-noted 31-year-old son of much-quoted chatterbox Lady Astor; from the U.S. after a silent six-week visit. Mother lingered behind, possibly to paste in the family scrapbook a piquant social item from the Des Moines Register; "When [Lady Astor] finished speaking at the . . . tea, one of the guests thanked the speaker profusely. The English noblewoman responded with a sudden kick right on her admirer's posterior. The guest stiffened,then, with a gale of laughter, turned and kicked the Lady right back." *
* A somewhat exaggerated account. Lady Astor and the Des Moines lady, both laughing heartily, did kick out playfully at each other, but neither kick landed. Later, the Des Moines lady reported admiringly: "She talks with her feet as well as her hands."
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