Hearth & Home

Errol Flynn, who says he is still "very much in love" with his recent house guest, Rumanian Princess Irine Ghica, complained that the $23,200 in alimony which he pays each year to first wife Lili Damita is just too much for him: "I may have to print my own money soon unless the amount is reduced." Another outstanding Flynn liability: $6,000 a year to second wife Nora Eddington (now married to Singer Dick Haymes) for the support of their two children.

Ruth Marx wanted $15,000 from ex-husband Groucho because, she told the court, the man with the grease mustache had tricked her into signing an agreement terminating her alimony in case he should divorce second wife Kay, which he did last May.

In Chicago, Perfume King (Tabu) J. Leslie Younghusband, whose Florida wedding to Dancer Mary Uhlmann made quite a social splash back in 1937 (Younghusband slugged one newspaperman behind the ear, threw another into the swimming pool), filed suit for divorce on the ground that fifth wife Mary had gone off and left him.

While third husband William Grant Sherry, 35, applied for a license to marry the 23-year-old governess of their three-year-old child, Cinemactress Bette Davis, 42, went through a hasty south-of-the-border marriage ceremony with Cinemactor Gary Merrill, 35. Would she pose for photographers kissing the groom? Said Bette primly: "I came from New England, and we simply don't do things, like that in public in New England."

Work & Play

At Lake Success, Admiral Chester Nimitz, mediator of the India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir, also took on the job of U.N. public-relations consultant, i.e., official spreader of good will. In Omaha, Navy Secretary Francis Matthews was named president of radio station WOW, Inc. In Boston, onetime Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Louis Denfeld filed his papers for the Republican nomination for governor of Massachusetts.

All togged out in pullover, batter's gloves and pads, British Cinemactress Jean ("Ophelia") Simmons struck a pose while waiting her turn at bat in the contest of Pinewood Film Studio v. the Cranleigh School. Cricketer Simmons scored 14 runs, helped Pinewood win by three wickets.

Randolph Churchill, 39, greying son of Winston, wartime crack Commando major and more recently a lecturer and newspaper pundit, was off to Korea where he will report the war for the London Daily Telegraph.

Cinemactor Charles Coburn, 73, paid a nostalgic visit to Coney Island, where, back in 1897, he used to work as a bike racer.

Off to their National Guard units for annual maneuvers: ist Lieut. Harold Arthur, 46, governor of Vermont and onetime boy whistling prodigy; Curt Simmons, 21, ace southpaw hurler (won 14, lost 5) who has helped spark the Philadelphia Phillies to the top of the National League.

Taking his ease in a Canterbury cinema, Dr. Hewlett Johnson, the "Red Dean" of Canterbury, slipped off his left gaiter, absentmindedly went off without it. Upon his return next day he learned that souvenir hunters had snipped off five of the buttons. "It's all right," the dean wanly told the apologetic manager. "It's always happening to me."

Arts & Letters

In Manhattan for a talk with his publishers, Wiiliam Saroyan reported that his new play, The Muscat Vineyard, is about California vineyard workers and other people "living in fun." He also said that he had written three new novels which were "very good and very important."

TV Funnyman Milton Berle let it be known that he had almost finished dictating a "serious" novel tentatively entitled Sit Still, My Soul.

For spring publication by Prentice-Hall: a novel "with a Thome Smith touch" about a British ex-army officer on a roistering tour of the U.S., written by Cinemactor (and wartime British lieut. colonel) David Niven.

Hearing that the Massachusetts supreme court had banned his 1933 novel, God's Little Acre (5,500,000 copies sold in the last 17 years) on the ground that it is "obscene," Erskine Caldwell said: "Boston.is not the guidepost of the world any more."

Asked how he would pass his 94th birthday, Bernard Shaw replied: "Rising, dressing, feeding, with its inevitable sequels, working, snoozing, undressing and going to bed. Provided, of course, I do not spend an earlier date . . . being cremated." Later, he told reporters that he marked the occasion by turning out a new comedy called The Lady She Would Not.

Meanwhile, Shavians were enjoying a rare treat: a previously unpublished letter which the playwright had written in 1922, after getting a prospectus from the French publisher of James Joyce's Ulysses. Shaw wrote: "I have read several fragments of Ulysses in its serial form. It is a revolting record of a disgusting phase of civilization; but it is a truthful one ... I have walked those streets and know those shops and have heard and taken part in those conversations. I escaped from them to England at the age of 20; and forty years later have learnt from the books of Mr. Joyce that Dublin is still what it was, and young men are still drivelling in slack-jawed blackguardism just as they were in 1870. It is, however, some consolation to find that at last somebody has felt deeply enough about it to face the horror of writing it all down and using his literary genius to force people to face it ... I must add, as the prospectus implies an invitation to purchase, that I am an elderly Irish gentleman, and that if you imagine that any Irishman, much less an elderly one, would pay 150 francs for a book, you little know my countrymen."

Joyce's retort, in a letter to a friend: "I think I can read clearly (with the one good eye I have) between the lines. I would also take a small bet (up to 4.75 francs) that the writer has subscribed anonymously for a copy of Ulysses through some bookseller."

Shadow & Substance

After thinking it over, Cinemactress Gloria (Yes Sir, That's My Baby) De Haven stated her philosophy: "Nobody likes a sourpuss ... If you wanta be popular, you've gotta be happy and gay."

Mrs. George S. Patton Jr. recalled her late husband's answer (in 1945) to the question: "When will the Russians start their war?" "Not at all," replied the general, "while they can nibble away at countries like Yugoslavia, create puppet governments and raise puppet armies. Then, when they have got all they can that way, with many allies, and we are down to two divisions, they'll start marching."

On the cheerier side, Hollywood Spokesman Eric Johnston, who has twice dropped in at the Kremlin, doubted that Stalin would press the button for World War III: "He is an old man, and old men do not start wars."

Rosebud Yellow Robe, great-grandniece of Sioux Chief Sitting Bull, told Detroit newsmen that television has done the American Indian wrong. After years of "lobbying in Hollywood to get sympathetic treatment of Indian warriors in movies . . . television comes and the old-fashioned concept of the Indian as a complete barbarian and a horrible, senseless killer is being instilled in American children all over again."

What really won him around to taking Ezio Pinza's part in South Pacific, burly (6 ft. 3 in., 200 Ibs.) Baritone Ray Middleton confessed, was his leading lady, Mary Martin: "Mary and I have carried on a sort of love affair for many years--theatrically speaking."

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