Voice of Experience

Colonel Robert R. ("Bertie") McCormick was off on another global tour in his newest plane, a surplus Flying Fortress with machine guns removed. Objective this time: darkest Europe. Before leaving, he reassured all potentially anxious friends: "One could make a million flights before three of the four engines would fail simultaneously ... If all [five] of the crew should become incapacitated, I can hold the plane on an even keel and hit Europe somewhere . . ."

Hollywood's Bette Davis and Charles Laughton squared off over Sir Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (TIME, June 28). Bette agreed with Hearstling Jimmy Starr who said he "didn't like" the movie and that "I'm bored with Shakespeare." Pronounced Laughton: "It saddens me that Hollywood should be made to look even sillier than ever by one of its prominent artists . . . That I have not seen Sir Laurence Olivier's Hamlet is irrelevant . . ."

Beaver-chinned Monty Woolley offered a thought on Hollywood: "The only place in the world where you can fall asleep under a rosebush and freeze to death."

Joseph Stalin, it appeared (not dialectics), was really calling the pitch in Soviet music. New York Herald Tribune Musicritic Virgil Thomson quoted an ex-violinist of the Moscow State Symphony: "Anyone acquainted with the . . . 'musical mixed salad' . . . tastes of Stalin will recognize a remarkable similarity between his personal predilections and the officially sponsored concepts." What was it like to play for the boss? "If he likes a performance, he smiles . . . When a performance does not please him, [he] turns his back . . . There can be no greater blow . . ."

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