Arts & Letters

Walt Whitman would be a pretty good antidote for the world's present troubles, thought Irish Playwright Sean (Juno and the Paycock) O'Casey, who set his idea to a little rhyme for the New Statesman and Nation:

SAINTLY SINNER, SING FOR US

Walt Whitman, one of the world's good wishes

Is the one that wishes you here today.

To sing, shake hands to the world's peoples

To listen, cock-ear'd, in a way of wonder,

To all the others have got to say;

Then with your own embracing message,

Lead all correctly, or lead us astray;

For either is goodness with God, and gay,

Like song of a thrush or screech of a jay;

They'll mingle miles on, from each other learning

That life's delightful at work or play.

So enter in spirit the sharp contentions

Of brothers belling each other at bay;

And soften the snout of the menacing

cannon With the scent and bloom of a lilac spray.

Worn to a frazzle with casting problems for his new circus picture, The Greatest Show on Earth, Director Cecil B. DeMille dutifully posed for a pressagent's picture with a "hopeful starlet" licking his hand. The starlet: "Little Tyke," a four-year-old vegetarian lioness, raised on Pablum, milk and corn flakes.

Eric Williams, whose book The Wooden Horse (TIME, Jan. 23) recounted the daring breaks by allied airmen from a German prison camp, found some fascinated listeners to his lecture on the science of escape. The audience: 400 inmates of Maidstone prison, near London.

In time for holiday reading, Good Housekeeping proudly presented the opening chapters of Francis Cardinal Spellman's first novel, The Foundling, the story of a baby found in a Roman Catholic cathedral by a Protestant veteran of World War I. The cardinal, author of half-a-dozen books, announced that he had turned over his rights to the Roman Catholic New York Foundling Hospital.

Aches & Pains

After a monthlong, "part-time" physical going-over at the naval hospital in Bethesda, Md., Vice President Alben W. Berkley checked out with the news that he had trimmed down 22 Ibs. (to 190), hoped to lose five more by giving up candy.

After war jitters had caused Mohamed Reza Pahlevi, the Shah of Iran, to discourage presents and cancel plans for lavish wedding parties this week, his fiancee, Soraya Esfandiari, recovering from typhoid, came down with the grippe and the wedding itself was postponed for a month.

In Albany, "in the light of the national emergency and the international crisis," Governor Thomas E. Dewey canceled plans for the traditional inauguration ball.

Brass & Cymbals

In Atherton, Calif., Ty Cobb, baseball immortal and Coca-Cola stockholder, spent a day reading his 64th birthday mail and romping with his sour-faced boxer, "Chuddy." He was more than ever convinced that baseball should not be sacrificed even if the nation goes to war.

On the boss's 71st birthday, the Soviet press did its usual dutiful job of singing the praises of Joseph Stalin. He was, the papers said, "The Greatest Scientist of Our Time." At least one highway and still another city were renamed in his honor. On the practical side, an East German steelworks dedicated a new oven to him. There was also the not-so-admiring group in West Germany which sent a little gift: a wreath of barbed wire.

At the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Crown Prince Akihito gravely accepted congratulations on his 17th birthday.

In San Francisco, Shirley Temple, 22, said that she and her second husband, Charles Black, had reached a decision: "I am officially retiring from the screen. I feel that I've made pictures long enough. Nineteen years now, you know. I want to be a good wife and mother and I don't think I can do both. Some people can, I know, but not me."

On the docks in Southampton, England, patient photographers finally got the shot they were waiting for: Marlene Dietrich in fur-lined coat and galoshes, daintily sloshing through ankle-deep snow on her way to board the Queen Elizabeth for Christmas in Manhattan.

The annual Christmas dance for the servants at Buckingham Palace got under way when the orchestra struck up Night and Day and King George VI led Household Maid Isabel Ross in the first foxtrot of the evening. Then, instead of leaving after his usual one duty dance, His Majesty enjoyed two more rounds while Queen Elizabeth, in gold-tinted crinoline and a diamond tiara, danced with her deputy steward and a page.

In a London Sunday Times review of a book about Paris, Playwright Christopher (The Lady's Not for Burning) Fry slipped in some travel notes of his own. Wrote Fry: "My life is often enriched by carefully laid plans for holidays abroad and as often, and equally, by giving up the whole idea. I have more frequently not gone to Paris than anywhere else in the world, especially in the Spring."

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