Billy Rose Gives a Party

In his syndicated "Pitching Horseshoes" last week, Columnist Billy Rose told a touching tale about an actress of bygone days whom he called Harriet Reeves. According to Rose, she was a prima donna who made many enemies by her scene-stealing and slights before a weak heart forced her to quit the stage. Then, told that she had only a few months to live, Harriet Reeves contritely determined to give an elaborate party for the people she had wronged. But on the appointed night "last summer," nobody came. After two hours of humiliating waiting, Harriet Reeves had a heart attack and died. A few days later, concluded Columnist Rose, her lawyer "came across an ironic footnote to her lifetime of forgetfulness. It was the stack of invitations to the party which Harriet had stamped and addressed --but forgotten to mail."

Readers less forgetful than Harriet Reeves promptly took Rose to task. Wasn't his tale the same as a short story of Evelyn Waugh's, first published in 1936 under the title "Bella Fleace Gave a Party'? Waugh's story told about a lonely, eccentric Irishwoman who had also resolved to give a ball for the neighbors she had so long neglected. None of the invited guests came. Concluded Waugh: "A day later she died. Mr. Banks [her heir] . . . spent a week sorting out her effects. Among them he found in her escritoire, stamped, addressed, but unposted, the invitations to the ball."

Said Rose, who had never read the Waugh story: "It's one of those stinking, unbelievable coincidences."

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