Wise Beyond Years

MANNERS & MORALS

"The debutante industry," twinkled the New York Star, "was trying to recover its aplomb." But it was still reeling, said the Star, from the news that tall, lissome Joanne Connelley was going to forgo her debut and get married instead. The man of her choice was Robert Sweeny, 37, an ex-amateur golf champion, ex-combat pilot, and onetime heavy beau of Babs Hutton and Lady Stanley.

The hotels, caterers, dance orchestras, and social secretaries who conduct New York's $3,000,000-a-year debutante trade knew that debuts were not what they used to be. Parents no longer built special ballrooms on their country estates, or spent $10,000 for decorations, or hired 50-piece orchestras, or gutted Broadway's flossiest nightclubs for entertainment. Nowadays, a debutante might be charged as little as $1,000 for a dinner, $6,000 for a supper dance.

A Farce. Last June, Pamela Curran, another of the year's prettiest, had abruptly called off a $20,000 debut at her mother's Long Island estate. She said she was going to France instead. Said Pamela: "The idea used to be that you never went out at all until your debut, and then it was something to look forward to. But now people start going out when they're twelve, and it's a farce."

For one thing, New York "society" has never been able to shut its top drawer (as more settled towns have, or pretend to have); socialites, cafe socialites, climbers and hangers-on buzz across the city's night life like a queenless swarm. But the hard fact was that the debut was becoming an anachronism. In a less strident day, when children were seen and not heard, a debut was at least as significant as the unveiling of a civic monument. If it uncovered nothing the audience had not seen before, it was at least official and marked the removal of the protective scaffolding. But by the time she is 18, the modern New York debutante is already a familiar denizen of the Stork Club and the" tabloids, and is capable of deciding at a glance whether her escort is sober enough to drive.

Sweet & Young. To her practiced eye, the debutante party is a poor pitch. The boys from Harvard, Yale and Princeton who throng the stag line and trace the source of champagne and Scotch to the pantry with the single-minded cunning of a parched mongoose, are not what she is looking for. Said Joanne: "I don't really like college boys. I know what they are going to say and how they think. They're so silly, and don't know how to drink." Some of the college boys seemed to share her indifference. Said a Yale man: "All you can do at a deb party is talk, and who wants to talk?"

Americana

P:A new fad appeared in Georgia--grasshopper-eating.* Across the state, college students and other daredevils gulped them down alive for $1.50 to $20 a hopper. Said one girl: "It tickled slightly when it went down and was sort of scratchy." Said a male eater: "Something like live grass."

P:Instead of candy and nuts, youngsters of Mentor, Ohio demanded needles, thread and buttons on their Hallowe'en rounds as their part in the campaign to help the people of Suolahti, Finland, a town, which Mentor has "adopted." P: Newark's Judge Nicholas Fernicola ruled that Mrs. W. J. Clark had a perfect right to hit a bill collector with a broom. Said the judge: "A woman's home is her castle, and she doesn't have to have anyone in it she doesn't want." P:In San Francisco, Patrick James Fleming, 23, an ex-convict, discovered a trap door in the men's room leading to a false ceiling over the Bond Bar. He holed up every night before closing, emerged after hours to help himself to liquor and sandwiches, was not discovered until 30 days later when a customer noticed whiskey leaking through the ceiling. Said Fleming: "I never had it so good." P:Burbank, Calif, called off plans for a $2,500 float to represent the city at Pasadena's Tournament of Roses, decided to spend the money toward a new sewer. P:After a year of editorializing, letter-writing and resolution-passing, local historians of Babylon, N.Y. got the Board on Geographic Names to reverse itself, make the name of their creek Sumpwams, instead of Sumpwams. Expressing gratification, J. H. McAllister of the Babylon Leader explained: "It's an old Indian name--somewhere between a grunt and something else." The ordinary Babylonian, however, went on calling it East Creek.

P:In tip-hungry Manhattan, the 10% rule of thumb was as dead as the nickel fare. Three trade associations threw some light on the going rates: 15% on restaurant checks; 20% to 25% on cab fares; 25-c- for bellhops (two bags). A shine was 15-c---plus 10-c- tip.

P: Dr. James F. Bender, director of the National Institute for Human Relations, announced that schoolteachers make the best wives.

P:Navy headquarters at Pearl Harbor received a letter from Mrs. John S. Campbell of Elizabethton, Tenn., enclosing one wilted daisy and a note: "In loving memory of our son, William Vane Campbell, killed Dec. 7 on ship U.S.S. Oklahoma." On Navy Day, a plane dropped the daisy over the spot where the Oklahoma sank. To Mrs. Campbell, the Navy sent a message: "Your flower has been delivered."

*In 1939's goldfish-eating fad, a Clark University student ate 89 fish at one sitting.

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