Thoughts & Afterthoughts

"A great many producers 30 or 40 years ago used to invest their own money in their own shows. They all died broke," Composer Richard Rodgers and Librettist Oscar Hammerstein 2d, co-producers of six successive Broadway hits, including South Pacific, wrote in the New York Times. "It is not our intention to die broke if we can help it ... We believe that outside capital can and should be invited into the theater . . ."

"Fiction is a clarifying agent," Journalist-Novelist John Mersey (The Wall, A Bell for Adano) wrote in the Writer's Book. "It makes truth plausible ... Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it . . ."

Famed Swiss Architect Alfred Roth, now a visiting professor at Washington University's School of Architecture, saw the slum districts of St. Louis for the first time, said: "I don't wish to be impolite, but I've been many times in the slums of London . . . I've seen the damaged areas of Western Europe . . . and never in my life have I seen anything like this."

In Edinburg, Texas, touring Soprano Margaret Truman admitted that she was not yet sure what her income tax would amount to. Asked if it was true that she once studied a withholding statement and muttered: "That man Truman," she replied: "No, I think I said: 'That man [Secretary of the Treasury] Snyderi'"

Entrances & Exits

France's President Vincent Auriol was in London on the first visit to England of a French President since the 1939 trip of Albert Lebrun (see MILESTONES).

Swamped with lecture bookings, at fees reported running up to $1,500 a lecture, former Atomic Energy Commission Boss David Lilienthal was doing one-night stands in Atlantic City, Schenectady, Detroit, Columbus and Atlanta. When his U.S. lecture dates run out, he plans a trip around the world.

"No one has ever reported my age correctly," said oldtime Cinemactress Gloria Swanson as she arrived in Manhattan to ballyhoo her forthcoming movie, Sunset Boulevard, in which she plays a faded movie queen dreaming of a comeback. "They always have me about 80 or 90 years old. For the record ... I was born in 1899 . . ."

Speaking at Indiana University in Bloomington, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt admitted that she'd like to have a couple of Hoosier hogs for her Hyde Park, N.Y. farm if she could get them for $100 each. Farmer L. L. Stewart of Kirklin, Ind. sent her two 300-lb. black & white Hampshire gilts, for which he ordinarily gets $200 each. Said Farmer Stewart philosophically: "She set her price and I met it."

The Laurels

A new kind of family act was staged at Philadelphia's Temple University. Two famous brothers, Columbia University's President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Pennsylvania State College's President-elect Milton Eisenhower, appeared at Temple and beamed happily as both were handed honorary Doctors of Law degrees.

Monocled Cinemactor Charles Coburn, 72, was being honored by his Hollywood studio on the occasion of his 60th year in show business. Before the square dancing, each guest would get a monocle; Coburn's would be gold-rimmed.

In Paris, Composer Gustave Charpentier, 89, was honored at the 50th anniversary of his opera, Louise. The Opera-Comique gave a gala performance of the show, and Charpentier himself, doing a bit of conducting, rated bravos from audience and cast.

Bishop Ivan Lee Holt, 64, head of the Methodist Council of Bishops and the Ecumenical Council of Methodist Churches, announced that he would marry Mrs. Starr Carithers, a widow of Winder, Ga., on March 27. The formal announcement was made in Washington at a luncheon given by the bishop's good friends, Vice President & Mrs. Alben Berkley, at whose wedding he had officiated.

Zone of Quiet

After Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer, 63, had a gall bladder and appendix operation in Cincinnati, his surgeon, Dr. Reed Shank, was startled by a long-distance call from Washington. Harry Truman was on the line saying: "He's a personal friend of mine and I wanted to hear directly from you how he's doing." Dr. Shank told the President that the patient's condition was "very good."

For the first time since she came down with a bad case of sciatica in February, Queen Mary, 82, had a little outing: she was driven around in her green Daimler to see the crocuses in the parks near her home at Marlborough House.

Cinemactress Claudette Colbert was having her troubles in Hollywood. In January she slipped on a step and cracked a vertebra. Later, in a brace, she tried to walk downstairs, slipped again and ruptured a disc. Doctors, including her husband, Dr. Joel Pressman, estimated that it would be another month before she could be up & around. Complained Claudette: "If I'd been anybody else, I'd have gone to a doctor. But when you're married to one you hate to bother him with family ailments . . ."

Between radio broadcasts in the near future, Bing Crosby planned to enter a hospital, have his appendix removed.

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