Troubled Times

During a heated debate in Washington on whether District of Columbia dog licenses should be raised from $3 to $5, Virginia's Representative Howard W. Smith sounded a warning: "Cats, semi-wild ones, many with rabies, are roaming Virginia. People are being attacked in their front yards . . . I'm all for doing something about cats, perhaps licensing them. They tell me cats are roaming animals. These wild ones may soon roam into the District."

When Jane Russell, Lana Turner, Joan Crawford, Jimmy Durante and Victor Mature failed to appear as witnesses at the trial of a Hollywood fashion designer charged with stealing a fur piece, the court lost its temper, said: "These Hollywood people ask the protection of the courts, but fail to appear when it doesn't suit their convenience. Who do they think they are? Movie people are no better than anyone else."

After another five weeks in a Zurich clinic for further treatment of his tuberculous spinal infection, Sir Stafford Cripps felt well enough to leave his bed a few times each day, was spending the rest of his time doing crochet and tapestry designs, and rereading some of his old favorites, including Winnie the Pooh and Dr. Doolittle.

After five days of freedom on her fifth escape, during which she managed to get a beauty treatment and a new hairdo, Winnie Ruth Judd went back to the Arizona State Hospital in Phoenix and gave herself up. Reason: a grand jury promise to hear her side of the 20-year-old trunk murder for which she was tried and convicted without having taken the witness stand in her own defense.

New Approaches

In Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin, 62, announced that he was finishing up his new movie, Limelight, the story of an aging music-hall artist, in which he is the star, producer, director, choreographer, composer, writer and orchestra conductor. The role of a ballerina he assigned to his new leading lady, 20-year-old London Actress Claire Bloom.

Amon Carter Jr., 32, son of the publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (circ. 232,861), stepped into the job he had been groomed for during the past 20 years. A paper-tosser with a regular route at eleven, he moved up to office boy, then staff photographer (as a tank commander in North Africa, he was captured, held prisoner by the Germans for 27 months). Later he sold advertising, was promoted to advertising manager and member of the board of directors of the company. Last week he was named president of the company, and Amon Sr. moved up to chairman of the board, where he will have even more time to promote Fort Worth.

In Hollywood, Esther Williams, who has splashed her way to many an aquatic box-office hit, was in the swim again. This time it was the life story of Annette Kellerman, a pioneer of the one-piece bathing suit (with full-length tights), which caused her arrest in a shocked Boston 42 years ago when she introduced it. On hand as technical adviser was 64-year-old Annette herself to help with the facts and with Esther's 28-bathing-suit wardrobe, which includes fluffy bloomers and sleek, skintight numbers, but nothing in the Bikini line. Annette believes the Bikinis "expose some of the less graceful parts of the anatomy."

Identification Tags

Some 7,000 G.O.P. boosters crowded into the gymnasium of Washington's Georgetown University for an evening of political calisthenics, fried chicken and speechmaking. Outshining such professional entertainers as Cinemactor Adolphe Menjou, who emceed the show, and ex-Pug Buddy Boer, who crooned: New Hampshire's Senator Charles W. Tobey, who posed in an Uncle Sam hat, with an "I Like Ike" button on his lapel, a raddled drumstick in hand and a campaign gleam in his eye.

In San Francisco, Beautician Elizabeth Arden spoke candidly of the new poodle hairdo: "No one in the world loves dogs more than I do, particularly poodles. But why on earth would a lovely woman want to cut her hair to imitate the canine species? Women's hair should be cut, shaped and curled divinely, but in a feminine fashion. I'm for women looking charming, and always looking like women."

From its headquarters in Arcadia,Calif., an organization which calls itself "The Organized Smiths of America" named Marine General Oliver P. Smith ("Retreat, hell! We're just advancing in a different direction") the "Smith of the Year" because he "typifies the fighting American spirit." Among other Smiths who got bows: Humorist H. Allen (Low Man on a Totem Pole) Smith and Kate Smith.

In Chicago, Earl ("Madman") Muntz, onetime used-car magnate turned television tycoon, showed further evidence of his advertising talent by announcing that he would christen his baby daughter Tee Vee Muntz.

An inquiring reporter turned up a bit of overlooked Eisenhower family news: last December at Fort Knox, Major and Mrs. John Eisenhower presented grandfather Dwight with his third grandchild, Susan Elaine. Her father, an officer in an armored school, had simply skipped a public announcement of the event.

Money Matters

The New York Times printed a letter from a Londoner who had the itch to gamble: "May I . . . ask if you can recommend to me the names of three or four reliable, honest political bookmakers in New York (or elsewhere in the U.S.A.) who might be willing to quote me odds on Governor Earl Warren (California) as President. As I may be interested in placing a fairly sizable bet on Governor Warren's chances (if the odds were proper), it would be imperative that I be dealing with a man of unquestioned integrity and with adequate funds at his disposal."

Except for two dissenting Communists, members of the lower chamber of the Dutch Parliament faced the facts of the times, voted the first royal allowance increase since 1938: for Queen Juliana, a raise from 1,200,000 to 1,500,000 guilders ($395,000) a year; for Prince Bernhard, a boost from 200,000 to 300,000 guilders.

Former Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson, who died in an Elizabeth, N.J. air crash last month, always remembered the patrol of five men who volunteered to crawl to his rescue one day in World War I when he was an infantry captain, cut off and trapped in a German-held segment of the Argonne. Last week four of the surviving men -- Patrick J. Carroll, N.Y., Peter Finucane, The Bronx, Richard Foy, N.J. and John Duffy, Brooklyn -- plus his old orderly, Samuel Silverstein, Camp Gordon, Ga., learned that Judge Patterson had left each of them a token bequest of $200.

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