Unfinished Business

Manhattan tabloids happily headlined the latest installment of the big Billy Rose-Eleanor Holm domestic serial. The last chapter had featured Eleanor suing for temporary alimony, asking for a reported $1,250 a week, and actually getting $700 plus the use of their Beekman Place town house, on which she changed the locks. Last week it was Billy's turn for the big type.

He sued for the privilege of using the house, too. In the first place, he said, he heard that Eleanor had barricaded the front door with his $75,000 Rembrandt, had flung a Franz Hals portrait and a Turner landscape into a damp basement liquor closet, along with his valuable collection of antique silver by Paul Storr, silversmith to George III. Things like these needed a man's protection. Rose said he would also like to pick up some of his winter coats and suits, and furthermore he needed the house in order to entertain properly. His Ziegfeld Theater apartment, to which he is exiled (and where blonde Joyce Matthews, ex-wife of Milton Berle, slashed her wrists in a fit of melancholy last summer) "is much more a business office than a place to entertain graciously or adequately."

The court promised to consider the plea. Meanwhile, not to let a sleeping story lie, Billy was busy on another tack. He hired a West Coast attorney to check the validity of Eleanor's 1938 divorce from Bandleader Art Jarrett. The divorce was quite in order, retorted Eleanor's attorney, but so far as Rose's action was concerned, "I shall not comment on its moral nature except to say that I do not think it will rank high among the decent or gracious acts of 1952."

The Lucky Ones

To launch its 100th anniversary celebration this week, Marshall Field's Chicago department store invited some of its former employees to a buffet supper. Among them: Movie Director Vincente Minnelli, who once dressed the store's windows; Felix Adler, the famed clown, who once sold rugs; Burt Lancaster, floorwalker turned cinemactor; Cinemactress Arlene Dahl, onetime lingerie model; and ex-Elevator Girl Dorothy Lamour.

Admiral Raymond A. Spruance (ret), hero of the Battles of Midway and the Philippine Sea, and longtime commander of the Fifth Fleet, was nominated by the White House for another Pacific assignment: Ambassador to the Philippines, to replace Envoy Myron M. Cowen.

After a quiet celebration of the royal 18th birthday, the Imperial Palace in Tokyo released a picture of Prince Akihito for the public to see. Taken by the palace photographer, it showed a dashing young man on horseback taking his pet jumper Wakazakura over some high hurdles.

For the fourth time Eleanor Roosevelt headed the annual Book of Knowledge list of the world's brainiest women. On the list for the third time: Senator Margaret Chase Smith, Anatomist Dr. Florence Reno Sabin, New York Times Foreign Correspondent & Columnist Anne O'Hare McCormick, Mme. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, former Indian Ambassador to the U.S. On the list for the second time: Correspondent Marguerite Higgins. Among those who made it for the first time: Social Worker Katharine Lenroot, Physicist Lise Meitner, Princess Elizabeth, Assistant Defense Secretary Anna Rosenberg, Actress Judy (Born Yesterday) Holliday, Mrs. Ogden Reid, publisher of the New York Herald Tribune.

In Bonham, Texas, a group of friends surprised Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn with a 70th birthday present: a fancy Browning over & under 12-gauge shotgun. How did he feel? As for the gift, said Rayburn, he never expected to own such a splendid gun. As for his health, "I never felt better in my life."

On New Year's Eve in Manhattan, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor gave photographers a rare chance to catch a glimpse of royalty at the stroke of twelve.

The Fuller Explanation

The New York Post's Publisher Dorothy Schiff reported a recent conversation with Secretary of State Dean Acheson. In the face of constant criticism, Acheson told her, the only way to maintain one's ballast is to keep a sense of humor and proportion. "He illustrated ... by telling a little story about the eight-year-old daughter of a colleague of his in the State Department. Her mother saw her ... having an altercation with her little friend, sticking her tongue out at her, and saying 'Dean Acheson.' The shocked mother said: 'Did I hear you talking about the Secretary of State?' 'Yes,' replied her daughter. 'Since you spanked me for saying damn, I now say Dean Acheson.' "

In his weekly newspaper, the Statesman, Georgia's Governor Herman Talmadge explained why he has not been enjoying his TV set: Georgia's sovereign air is being violated by such Yankee telecasts as a show in which white and Negro children dance together (Ken Murray's Christmas show), two white and two Negro singers (Arthur Godfrey's "The Mariners"). And on a Clifton Fadiman show, the governor was shocked to see a Negro woman and a white woman sitting and talking to each other. "Television is just about equivalent to visiting somebody in his home," fumed the wool-hat governor, and "in the present situation a Southerner must either turn off the dial and miss the good shows or else must stand there and take these insults."

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