Down to Earth

In Lake Success, N.Y. appeared scholarly Kung Teh-cheng, 28, for a look at U.N. headquarters. He proved to be the great-great-(to the 77th generation )grandson of Confucius, in the U.S. for conversations with U.S. scholars. To the press, Kung said of U.N.: his ancestor would have okayed the general idea.

In San Diego reappeared Ruth Elder, famed speed-&-distance flyer of the '205. Ruth, who has survived one forced landing in mid-Atlantic (in 1927) and five marriages, has now set her hand to writing an aviation column for the San Diego Journal.

In Los Angeles, a new career was begun by another flyer: Gregory ("Pappy") Boyington, famed in wartime as a Marine ace and in peacetime for his girl trouble (TIME, Jan. 21, 1946). Adventurous Pappy was now in shirts & ties, behind a haberdasher's counter. Said he: "I've got that old retailer's smile."

The Literary Life

Standard Classic Maurice (The Blue Bird) Maeterlinck, who filed suit against Dodd, Mead & Co., publishers, for $250,000 last summer (complaining that they had failed to publish and promote him properly), changed his mind, dropped the whole thing.

Russian Novelist llya Ehrenburg, who a few years ago won a Stalin Prize (currently worth $18,862), won it all over again with The Storm, a novel about Russia's wartime heroism and the Allies' rapaciousness. Dramatist Konstantin Simonov, whose The Russian Question (about corrupt U.S. journalism) won him a Stalin Prize last year, got none this time--but prizes went to the men who made a movie of his play.

Dr. William Carlos Williams, whose poetry operates without anesthetics (The Wedge, Adam & Eve & the City), got a $1,000 award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

In Atlanta, Margaret (Gone With the Wind) Mitchell and visiting lecturer Lady Astor were introduced to each other, and quickly showed U.N. how. "You will never know how much that book meant to us," said Lady Astor, speaking for England. "Lady Astor, I hope the British will send over here more people like you," said Novelist Mitchell, "with the power to speak to the heart."

"The atom bomb," confided George Bernard Shaw, "is out of the question, just as gas was in the last war. It is too destructive to both sides."

To Have & Have Not

Left by the late Earl Baldwin of Bewdley (Britain's onetime Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin): an estate worth $1,123,884.

Allowed by the court to ex-Ziegfeld Girl Gladys Glad, out of the estate left by her late husband, Hollywood Producer Mark Hellinger: $4,000 a month, for living expenses.

Lost by Comedians Bud Abbott & Lou Costello, at poker: considerable. Testifying last week at the income-tax-evasion trial of a Chicago gambler, they tried to remember their losses for certain periods. Abbott thought he had dropped from $20,000 to $25,000. Costello's contribution, he recalled, was only "around $15,000."

All in the Family

Dwight Eisenhower, in civilian clothes just six weeks, climbed back into uniform and rushed to West Point to play a supporting role in a dewy-eyed, unmilitary picture with son John, daughter-in-law Barbara Jean, and first grandchild Dwight David II (see cut).

Cinemactress Joan Fontaine, hard at work in Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, found time to announce to the press that she would have her first baby on or about Oct. 22.

Between exhibition games, Leo ("The Lip") Durocher and wife Laraine Day were granted adoption of a four-year-old girl after a ten-minute court hearing in Fort Worth. The child already had a name (Charlotte), but the proud foster parents planned to give her a fancier one: Melinda Michele.

Retired Opera Star Maria Jeritza, twice married but young-in-heart at 60, announced in Manhattan's El Morocco nightclub that she would presently marry a Newark manufacturer, Irving P. Seery, who had been courting her for five weeks.

Little Mickey Rooney's big second wife Betty, having tried two trial separations in a year, decided to get a divorce.

Lois Andrews, 24, model-about-town who married 50-year-old Comedian George Jessel in 1940 and divorced him in 1942, went nightclubbing with him in Hollywood. Next day she announced that she had separated from husband No. 3--on a trial basis. She explained: "A lot of little things were coming up when we were together. Maybe we can work them out apart."

Frances Heenan ("Peaches") Browning Hynes Civelli Willson, the '20s' pet child bride (at 15, of the late "Daddy" Browning, 51), got a three-minute divorce from fourth husband Ralph N. Willson in Redwood City, Calif. He already had a Reno divorce, but she did it again in California just to be on the safe side.

Joe Louis was tagged with a $500,000 alienation-of-affections suit by an out-of-work Baptist clergyman in Chicago. The Rev. Matthew C. Faulkner charged that the champ had pegged $35,000 worth of gifts (including $15,000 in cash) at his wife, Carolle, a model, and had broken up the Faulkner home. Said Joe, about to come home from Europe with wife Marva: "No truth in it." Said Carolle, in a Manhattan apartment with her two young (4 and 3) sons: "Not a bit of truth. . . ."

Affairs of State

Illinois' Adolph J. Sabath, who has been in Congress for 42 years, attained the age of 82, said he felt fine (except for his arthritis), but declined to celebrate his birthday--"not with conditions as alarming as they are." Yes, said Sabath, he would run for reelection. "About a year ago the doctors and Mrs. Sabath thought I should give up. But my friends asked me to run. . . ."

Ohio's Governor Thomas J. Herbert and Vermont's Governor Ernest W. Gibson obliged the citizens of rural Chardon, Ohio, by making a public blindfold test with maple syrup, to determine which state's was better. Herbert approved Vermont's and Gibson approved Ohio's, then each learned that neither had had a taste of his own state's.

Louisiana's Governor-elect Earl Long, whose victory cry was "Happy days are here again and the Longs are back in the saddle," was more than ready to resume the duties of his old office in May. He saw some saddles he liked, and bought an even dozen. A photographer gave the world a glimpse of the future (see cut).

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