The Realities

More than 1,000 followers with gold-embossed invitations to "The Marriage Feast of the Lamb" arrived in Philadelphia to help Father Divine, the self-proclaimed deity, celebrate the fifth anniversary of his wedding to Canadian-born Edna Rose Ritchings, whom he still proudly calls his "white, spotless virgin bride." For two days the "heavenly guests" shouted and sang as they waited a turn at the huge banquet table lighted with a neon sign: "God's Holy Communion Table of Unity Mission."

Back in the U.S. after spending 17 months in a Hungarian prison, Robert A. Vogeler entered Bethesda Naval Hospital near Washington. It would require "some time," Navy doctors said, for Annapolis-man Vogeler to recover from malnutrition, vitamin deficiency and chronic exhaustion.

Vice President Alben W. Berkley explained in El Paso why he spent so much time on speaking tours: "Since most of the American people can't afford to come to Washington to see the Government, I feel it's my duty to bring the Government to them." "

In London, Sir Hartley Shawcross, British prosecutor at the Nuernberg war crimes trials, and new President of the British Board of Trade, delivered a judgment on feminine fashions: "No woman in Britain should have so many clothes that she can ask her husband, 'What shall I wear tonight?' " Furthermore, he added, "the only clothes suitable for the wife of any member of the Government obviously are sackcloth and ashes nowadays."

Still suffering from a sharp attack of lumbago, Israel's Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion arrived in Washington for a four-week tour of the U.S. After a luncheon with the President and a confab with Government officials, he got down to work on the real purpose of his trip: to help launch the new $500,000,000 Israeli bond issue (TIME, April 2).

The Arts

When Margaret Truman stepped into the Pump Room of Chicago's Ambassador Hotel, fresh from Hollywood and her radio acting debut, the headwaiter led her to Table No. 1 with a respectful flourish. The last time Margaret had rated only Table No. 11. The reason for the rise in rank, the hotel explained: Miss Truman is no longer just a President's daughter and a singer; she is now a radio and television actress.

In Spokane, Wash., Austrian-born Ski Instructor, and former fire extinguisher salesman, Hans Hauser, husband of gangland's Glamour Girl Virginia Hill, asked U.S. immigration officers for permission to leave his home, take his wife and child south to teach skiing in Chile.

In Manhattan, Actress Gertrude (The King and I) Lawrence signed on for a bit-part in civil defense, got billing as air raid warden #18-1133.

Just before the concert was scheduled to begin in Birmingham, England, a local news photographer snapped an unauthorized shot of hot-tempered, camera-shy Conductor Leopold Stokowski, who blinked in anger and issued an ultimatum: hand over the film or there will be no concert. The photographer surrendered, waited patiently, caught the maestro unexpectedly for the second time after the concert was finished.

Slap-happy radio & cinema Comic Red Skelton announced from Hollywood that he had signed a new seven-year contract with Sponsor Procter & Gamble to peddle his wares on television, too. His salary for radio & TV antics: "Nearly $1,000,000 a year."

Marlene Dietrich, now in Hollywood making a Technicolored western epic, left the cameras long enough to join a press party in memory of her arrival from Germany 21 years ago. Her daughter, 26, now a Manhattan television actress, and a third of the original 68 reporters who covered her first press conference gathered to sip champagne with the screen's most famous grandmother, who admitted that she simply could not remember anything about the original conference. Said she: "I've forgotten it all. Wouldn't you, after 21 years?"

Contralto Marian Anderson, on a Latin American concert tour, charmed her audience in San Juan, was in turn charmed by a "quiet and pleasant" luncheon with Puerto Rico's Governor Luis Munoz Marin. Later, dining at the Bankers Club, she applauded the chef's art by ordering two double helpings of his specialty: Cabrito Estofado, a goat stew highly seasoned with laurel leaves, capers, olives, almonds, wine and raisins.

When Cambridge, Mass, police stepped in and called a moral halt to a showing of Hedy Lamarr's provocative old "art" film Ecstasy, some 800 outraged M.I.T. students engineered a near riot of protest, booed the cops, tossed a sodium bomb against the side of President James Killian's house, and, in a final petulant gesture, draped a Communist flag from the freshman dormitory.

The Golden West

The Society of American Florists (and pressagent) decided that Mrs. Benjamin Gage, Hollywood housewife and mother of two (better known to cinema audiences as Swimming Star Esther Williams), "embodies everything that is typical of the Young American Mother," sent her a huge bunch of American Beauty roses and named her "Queen of Mother's Day -- 1951."

In Hollywood, fancy-frilled Tennis Star Gertrude ("Gorgeous Gussie") Moran admitted that her off-again-on-again plans to marry Gloria Vanderbilt's ex-husband Pat Di Cicco were off for good. "When a man and a woman go around together," she explained, "there comes a time when they should get married. If they go past it, a wedding would be ridiculous. Pat and I passed that time quite a while ago." On the other hand, she sighed, one seldom meets eligible men in the "tennis racket." "Oh, you usually find a gang of men waiting when you finish a match, but they're all such jerks."

Anita Loos, talking over her new book, A Mouse Is Born, with New York Times Book Columnist Harvey Breit, expounded on another art form. Said Author Loos: "I'm the oldest motion picture writer in the business. I am endlessly grateful to the movies, and I'll tell you why. Because a writer can always make a living writing for the movies when he hasn't anything to say. If it hadn't been for the movies, I would have had to turn out novels when I had nothing to say . . . You can do a good job on other people's material . . . The movies help writers over their bad periods."

At a dinner of the Hollywood chapter of the National Secretaries Association, Guest Speaker Marie (My Friend Irma) Wilson warmed her audience by suggesting the organization of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Secretaries. Among her targets: "the boss who spills all his domestic problems to you"; the Mumbler "who dictates like he's wearing two sets of false teeth"; the Eager Beaver "who starts dictating before his secretary gets in the room." Concluded Actress Wilson, who once played a cinema secretary: "Secretaries should have the right to walk around the office in stocking feet after dancing all night; they should be allowed to wear curlers in their hair . . . and the boss should supply fresh gum."

A Los Angeles federal jury listened to a local sports promoter, Larry Rummans, charge Houston's millionaire Oilman Glenn McCarthy with kicking him in the face and neck, welching on a $1,500 football bet, and failing to pay for services rendered in promoting a 1949 charity football game. Damage due, he argued, came to $113,000. The jury figured it was somewhat less, ordered McCarthy to pay $5,000.

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