The Furrowed Brow

"I am not an optimist or a pessimist," announced Socialist Norman Thomas to a Kansas City audience. "I am a meliorist."

Eleanor Roosevelt couldn't quite see why Franklin Jr. "or anyone else wants to get into politics . . . But if he wants to, he has as much right to run as anyone."

"The Soviet woman, despite her sturdiness and resistance to hunger, cold, and suffering, cannot thrive on the misery that is her lot," said Mrs. Oksana Kasenkina, who jumped from a third floor window last summer rather than go back to the U.S.S.R. Russian women, she said, "age fast and die prematurely."

"I always knew Italians were very passionate people," reflected Ingrid Bergman, still getting her breath after her admiring fans caused a near-riot at a Roman press conference, "but I didn't know they were that passionate."

The Restless Foot

Musicomedienne Mistinguett, seventyish, whose shapely legs are an ancient Paris legend, was planning a tour of Canada this fall, and took a trouper's view of the project: "How long I stay depends on my success."

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin and wife called at the Vatican for a "very pleasant talk" with Pope Pius XII, a onetime violinist himself (he took lessons for five years in his youth).

Leathery Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, now living in retirement in San Francisco, was getting ready for a new assignment: running the U.N. plebiscite to find out whether Kashmir should join India or Pakistan.

Chaim Weizmann was packing his bags for a flight to the U.S. to be guest of honor this month at a $250-a-plate "Salute to the First President of Israel."

The Bended Knee

Playwright Tennessee Williams (The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire) was paying the price of international fame. A Tokyo producer, making out an application to SCAP for permission to put on two of Williams' plays, listed their titles (retranslated from the Japanese) as The Zoological Garden within the Glass Enclosure and A Motorbus by Nickname Hope.

Secretary of State Dean Acheson was just the man for the job, declared Hearstling Handwriting Expert Muriel Stafford, after a look at the crisp Acheson script. "It is interesting," she pointed out, "that both General Marshall and Dean Acheson write a firm, left-slanted writing. Both are reserved men, clear, swift thinkers, and strong willed . . . Dean Acheson has the added gift of intuition, shown in his quickly written, disconnected writing ... Low capitals indicate a modest man . . . he is also extremely literary. This is a cultured writing in the finest sense of the word ..."

For successfully performing a delicate operation called lumbar sympathectomy, Edinburgh's Professor James Learmonth was made Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order by the only man who can bestow the honor: his grateful patient, George VI.

To Stanley Marcus, balding boss of the Dallas-in-Wonderland Nieman-Marcus specialty shop (its specialty is selling chichi clothes to rich Texans), went the Chevalier Award of the French Legion of Honor, for "eminent services to the cause of French industrial and commercial recovery."

The University of Notre Dame's Laetare Medal, given annually to an outstanding member of the U.S. Roman Catholic laity, was awarded to Cinemactress Irene Dunne, three months after she was named by the National Conference of Christians and Jews as the person "who has done most in 1948 to promote better understanding among people of all faiths."

Harry Truman headed a list of the year's best voices ("tested for tone, rhythm, sexual impact, and diction"), compiled by an outfit called the Galanti Research Laboratories. Also listed in the vocal sweepstakes: Rise Stevens, Paulette Goddard, Burl Ives, Arthur Godfrey, Perry Como, Dinah Shore, Milton Berle, Bernard Baruch.

Cash & Carry

Left, by the late speed king Sir Malcolm Campbell: $687,100. To his first wife, whom he divorced in 1940, went $2,000, plus $1,600 a year. To their two children went almost all the rest. His second wife, whom he married in 1945 and divorced 2% years later, got nothing, "As she has adequate means of her own."

Stolen from the male actors in Broadway's The Big Knife: all their costumes. The only one spared was Star John Garfield. The show went on in street clothes.

Stolen from British Physicist Patrick M. S. Blackett, author of Fear, War, and the Bomb (a book which has been lustily cheered by the Soviet press): the Gold Medal for Physics of the 1948 Nobel Prize.

Stolen from Cinemactress Joan Crawford, by sneak thieves who cut through a second-story screen of her Brentwood, Calif, house while she was away in Palm Springs: $800 in cash, $1,450 in jewelry.

Hollywood hard guy Burt Lancaster, who first showed off his muscles as a circus acrobat 17 years ago, returned to the big top with the Cole Bros, for a four-week stint at the old stand. But there was a careful salary adjustment--from the old $3 a week to $11,000.

Baseball's great Ty Cobb, who won fame on the basepaths and a fortune in Coca-Cola stock, spaded the first shovelful of earth for the $200,000 Cobb Memorial Hospital (named for his parents) in Royston, Ga. Said the aging (62) Georgia Peach: "This is the happiest day of my life." His contribution: $100,000.

Hearth & Home

Enrol Flynn's wife Nora (5 1/2 years of marriage, two children) and Crooner Dick Haymes's wife Cinemactress Joanne Dru (seven years of marriage, three children) were all set for six weeks' residence in Nevada. After the divorces go through, Nora and Dick plan to get married.

After nearly six years of marriage, Cinemactress Maria Montez and Actor-Playwright Jean Pierre Aumont (My Name is Aquilon) made a decision. Explained Maria from Paris: "We are both very explosive and two explosive natures cannot get on together. Jean Pierre is stubborn, too, and our temperaments just don't fit. So we are separating for a while to see how things work out. But we are still great friends."

After 20 years of marriage, Olive Arnold, 54, got a divorce from beefy Cinemactor Edward Arnold, 59. Her settlement: the house they lived in, $10,000 cash, $1,000 a month.

Flesh & Blood

In Washington, where he is serving as temporary chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower came down with a "severe case of acute gastro-enteritis," had to cancel all dates. After a week in bed, he was able to get out of town for "a complete rest" in Key West.

In Washington, Representative J. Parnell Thomas was in "good" condition after a 2 1/2-hour operation. His doctors said they had cut out the cause of the internal hemorrhages that have plagued him for the past eight years.

In Paris, Barbara Hutton Troubetzkoy was "very weak . . . resting quietly in bed" and "recovering slowly" two weeks after a 22-hour abdominal operation; her third in 14 months.

In Paris, President Vincent Auripl was back at his desk after three days in bed with a bad chill.

In Berlin, Brigadier General Frank Howley, commandant of the American zone, had to be patched up for minor cuts about the face. An unidentified civilian tried to crash the party given by some correspondents to celebrate Howley's promotion from colonel. Before he was given the bum's rush, the crasher threw his drink, glass & all, into Howley's face.

In Copenhagen, Denmark's King Frederik IX took the day off with a touch of lumbago. The rest of the family was feeling poorly, too. Queen Ingrid had the flu, and the three little princesses had chicken pox.

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