After Due Consideration

Manhattan Banker James G. Blaine, grandson of 1884's Republican "Man from Maine," came out for "an orderly recession." He thought it would be good for the nation's economy. "There's little danger," said he, "unless the recession becomes a rout."

"Frankly, the theater would be a sight better off," declared Veteran Producer Gilbert Miller, "if there were some poverty around among authors, actors and agents. It flourished more luxuriantly when these characters were living in garrets. . . ."

"When a woman meets a beautiful dress," observed Broadway's Leonora Corbett, "she always has to ask herself two questions: Can I afford it? Is it worth it? This year there's a third: Are they trying to make a fool out of me?"

Emily Post, grand old lady of punctilio, informed interviewers that the bedroom of her country place was done in Chinese red. "Some of my friends say they think a bedroom should be restful," said she, "but I don't rest in a bedroom ever."

The Solid Flesh

Novelist Thomas Mann, 72, carried his arm in a sling but was nearly mended now: he had stumbled on a neighbor's stairs in Pacific Palisades (Calif.) and fractured his left shoulder.

Sophie Tucker, 64, everlasting "Last of the Red-Hot Mammas," trotted stoutly into a veterans' hospital in Coral Gables, Fla. to spread a little cheer. In the course of the proceedings, square-rigged Sophie lost her footing, went hard aground, broke two toes, departed the hospital in a wheelchair.

Cinemactor James Mason, after a week abed in Manhattan with a crushing cold, was up & around and back to normal; he let it be known that, after 15 months in the U.S., he would go to Hollywood at last and make at least one movie.

Prospects

General Thomas ("Tommy") Holcomb (ret.), commandant of the Marine Corps from 1936 through '43 (and first Marine ever to become a full general), resigned at 68, after four years as U.S. Minister to the Union of South Africa.

The Duchess of Sutherland, whose 59-year-old duke is one of England's great landowners, did a little job of work just before she sailed home from Manhattan. The shapely duchess did some modeling for a forthcoming cold-cream ad.

In Palm Beach, Fla., the Duke of Windsor also toyed with a new pursuit. It was too early yet to guess at his future. He pitched the first ball in the annual Society Softball Game--and it turned out he had never thrown one before. After a little instruction he managed to get it clear to the plate.

Jimmie Davis, troubadour Governor of Louisiana, was all set for his departure from office, come May. From the gubernatorial mansion he was making a sleeper-jump to a new career: his own nightclub in Hollywood, featuring his own hillbilly band and the ex-statesman himself in front of it.

Property

"It seems to be a law of nature," sighed Columnist Eleanor Roosevelt, "that everyone you grow to love must cause you some anxiety, and little dogs are no exception to the rule!" What prompted this: Fala's grandson, Tamas, had disappeared, was missing for several hours. Tamas' mistress, who would go to London this week to unveil a statue of the late President, went on a shopping expedition in Manhattan, chose a full-skirted black Chantilly lace number (see cut) for court functions.

Jim Farley, in Atlantic City, N.J. for a convention, lost a watch given to him by a fraternal order. The machinery of the law hummed, in jig time uncovered the watch in Farley's bed.

Eleanor Clay Ford, Automaker Edsel's widow, made her fourth annual probate court report on her late husband's estate. Distributed thus far among the principal beneficiaries (her four children, herself, and the Ford Foundation): $131,548,434. Paid out in estate taxes: $31,635,093.

Aviation Pioneer Orville Wright's estate added up to $1,067,105, mostly in stocks & bonds. Among them: a block of railroad (Santa Fe) securities, no aviation issues whatsoever. '

Penalties

Beulah Louise Overell, solidly built heiress acquitted last October of the bludgeon-&-blast murder of her parents, paid a $100 fine for hit-&-run driving in Los Angeles.

Ann Cooper Hewitt Nicholson, the heiress who made headlines a decade ago by charging that her mother had had her sterilized, was convicted of perjury with fourth husband Frank ("Rodeo Roy")

Nicholson in San Rafael, Calif. They faced a possible 1-to-14 years in the pen for falsely testifying at their trial last December for conspiring to evade California's premarital blood-test law.

Mark Hanna III, convivial great-grandson of the '90s' famed political boss and "President-Maker," was arrested in New Orleans for passing $60,000 worth of bum checks.

Posies

The Women's National Press Club announced its annual "achievement awards" to women, who would gather in Washington next week to take their formal bows. To 55-year-old British Novelist Rebecca West (Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, The Meaning of Treason) went the nod as woman-journalist-of-the-year, for her reporting job on the Nuernberg trials. Ingrid Bergman, 30, was picked as No.1 actress; and 32-year-old Novelist Jean Stafford*(The Mountain Lion) was tapped for literary honors.

Flushed with the success of her recent column on cleanliness (TIME, March 8), Columnist Elsa Maxwell named the five best-scrubbed males she knew. No.1: Actor Canada Lee ("Every time I've seen him . . . he's immaculate. This I consider a tour de force"). The others: ex-Ambassador to the Court of St. James's Joe Kennedy; ex-Ambassador to Italy Henry Fletcher; Maurice Chevalier ("liberally scrubbed in sunshine"); and Bernard Baruch ("difficult for an older man").

Douglas MacArthur, declared Cinemactress Marion Davies in the Hearst-papers, is "the greatest man since George Washington."

*Whose husband, Robert Lowell, got last year's Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

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