"I am a Communist and always call myself so," wrote George Bernard Shaw to a Communist candidate for Commons. But, he added, the party had blundered in failing to rub in "the hard fact that in Russia, private enterprise flourishes more than ever." Furthermore, it was opposing the Marshall Plan, "which is for the moment absolutely necessary." Concluded G.B.S.: "The Communist Party knows no more about electioneering than a pig knows of a holiday."

British Novelist Evelyn (The Loved One) Waugh, surveying U.S. letters for a St. Louis interviewer, named his favorite American writer: tireless Crime Fictioneer Erie Stanley Gardner. As for U.S. customs, Waugh complained that Sunday blue laws had deprived him of wine with his meals in Mobile, Ala. He found this situation "a frightful disgrace," which was driving many a wretched U.S. schoolboy to furtive whisky nipping.

Emperor Hirohito thought that his country's defeat, all in all, had not been such a bad thing. He assured newsmen that the war's results had led to better understanding between Japan and the U.S.

The Old Gang

Mary Pickford, 55, and the Gish sisters, Dorothy, 51, and Lillian, 52, posed together at a Manhattan restaurant, looking not at all as if some 40 years had passed since they first brought girlish graces and golden curls to the early U.S. screen. Even Mary's dialogue sounded familiar: "We girls get together as often as we can. We belong to each other, in the never-never land and into tomorrow."

From Germany's Landsberg Prison (where his friend Adolf Hitler once wrote Mein Kampf), ex-Gunmaker Alfred Krupp denied a report that he passed the time making toy guns. The fact was that Krupp was using his twelve-year term to resume the trade of his ancestors; he had become a locksmith.

For her philanthropic work in Los Angeles, where she was once a movie star, Marion Davies, fiftyish, was cited on the radio by Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt and daughter Anna as "the woman of the day." Mrs. Roosevelt was in line for a distinction of her own: granddaughter Sistie Boettiger Seagraves would present her in midsummer with her first great-grandchild. In an eventful week, the former First Lady did some reminiscing about how much her late husband had enjoyed movies. But, she recalled, he fell asleep during Gone With the Wind and was quite angry on waking up to find that the picture was still running. Grumbled F.D.R.: "No movie has a right to be that long."

Mellowing Jack Dempsey, 53, revealed that he gets Christmas and birthday greetings regularly from Gene Tunney, and that Luis Firpo (the Wild Bull of the Pampas) drops him an occasional letter.

Under a Manhattan auctioneer's gavel went 65 gold, gem-studded snuffboxes and watches collected by the late great Tenor Enrico Caruso.

Out of Action

Pretty Vivien Leigh tripped daintily up the narrow, old-fashioned stairs in her London home, caught her foot in the hem of the fur coat she was carrying, tumbled down again. A sprained back forced her to step out of her three current Old Vic roles for two weeks. Said Vivien: "It was a beautiful fall." Said husband Sir Laurence Olivier: "My God, I thought she had broken her neck."

Dancer-Comedian Ray Bolger, refereeing an exhibition bout at a Manhattan bock beer festival, wasn't nimble enough to dodge a playful poke by Welterweight Champion Sugar Ray Robinson. Bolger nursed a damaged nose with cold compresses, but gave his regular performance in Where's Charley? the next night.

Lady Mendl, 91, tireless international smart-setter, tried her own therapy when her doctor ordered her to bed for ten days. In a pink satin bed jacket and diamonds, she presided over several little dinner parties in her candlelit Hollywood bedroom. To small tables, her guests (Hedda Hopper, Clifton Webb, Fanny Brice, et al.) brought picnic baskets. Blooming under the treatment, Lady Mendl was ready this week to hop a boat for Europe.

Change of Pace

After 23 years in 76 roles at the Met, Basso Ezio Pinza, 56, opened in New Haven in his first musical, Broadway-bound South Pacific. His role: an island planter. Busy taking bows, he took time to say "au revoir and perhaps goodbye" to opera. "I am crazy to get into a straight play," he told an interviewer. "... I would have to have a strong part, a great lover or some other really dramatic role, and I think I would be good."

Austere Chancellor Robert Maynard Hutchins, 50, a strenuous foe of physical exercise (he abolished intercollegiate football at the University of Chicago nine years ago), crammed his 6 ft. 3 in. into an undersized football uniform for You're in the Styx, Professor, the annual faculty show. Hutchins struck a blow for higher education by warbling, in an uncertain baritone, The Rose Bowl Blues.

Mary Garden, 72, whose grand-operatic stripteasing in Salome and hipslinging in Thais set standards that Met music lovers still swear by, was coming out of retirement in her native Scotland. She would make a U.S. lecture tour next fall for the National Arts Foundation.

On two weeks' leave in Miami, 1st Lieut. Glenn Davis, 24, onetime fast-stepping West Point football star, sidestepped questions about his reported engagement to Cinemactress Elizabeth Taylor, 17. Just after the warm greeting, a conscientious photographer caught Elizabeth helping Glenn wipe away the traces of lipstick.

In the first royal visit to London's famed central criminal court building since their great-grandfather, Edward VII, officiated at its opening 42 years ago,

Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret sat in on a murder trial at Old Bailey. Neither batted an eyelash when the prosecutor, speaking in cultured accents, quoted one of the defendants as shouting: "We'll get away if we do in the bastard."

Just Deserts

Custom tailors got their annual pre-spring urge to name the ten best-dressed men in the U.S. Among the victors: Dean Acheson (who nosed out Harry S. Truman in the Government employee category), Clark Gable, Harold E. Stassen, and baseball's Lou Boudreau.

On Rhode Island's Senator J. Howard McGrath, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Pope Pius XII conferred a Knighthood of the Holy Sepulchre.

All Denmark outdid itself to celebrate King Frederik IX's soth birthday. Among his gifts: a racing motorboat, two carpets, a big electric stove with kitchen utensils, a tractor for plowing fire belts in the royal forest and, from a nine-year-old wellwisher, a letter containing some cigarettes.

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