Brown Study

Millionaire Asbestos Heir Tommy Manville, 58, bought full-page ads in the Manhattan tabloids Daily News and Post (cost: $4,100) to announce that he had discarded another wife. This time it was No. 9: Anita Roddy-Eden, 29, after 13 days of marriage. Reporters interviewing the unhappy couple came away with the clearest account to date of the Manville marriage system. The trouble, said Mrs. Manville No. 9, began with a quarrel on the twelfth day of their honeymoon after Tommy had drunk two quarts of gin and a quart of Dubonnet at a single sitting. The trouble, said Tommy, was with Anita. How about wife No. 10? After the details of this divorce are cleaned up, said Manville, he might consider marrying Anita's twin sister. "I am probably very much in love with her. It wouldn't be bad, son, it wouldn't be bad."

In Hollywood, Cinemactress Betty Grable talked to a London Daily Mirror columnist about a trend which was giving her some concern. Said she: "The eyes of the film fan world have switched up the feminine form . . . and I just can't compete. I've always been able to stand on my own legs, but there are lots of women with bustlines nature didn't provide. Bust building and decorating is shoving legs out of business, so I'm mighty glad I've got Big Noise [a promising young colt], a dozen horses and Harry James to fall back on if I ever need to."

During a checkup after his sinus surgery a fortnight ago, doctors at Bethesda Naval Hospital discovered that Senator Joseph McCarthy needed still more patching, and ordered an operation for diaphragmatic hernia. After successful surgery, McCarthy was told that the original ban on his politicking would be extended from six weeks to at least two months. Among those who agreed to lend their voices and pinch-hit in his campaign for reelection: Arthur Bliss Lane, onetime U.S. Ambassador to Poland, who will make an anti-Communist speech.

Purple Raiment

Photographers last week collected an album of smiling royalty and rulers bending to the charms of the younger generation. On her first trip to Hemel Hempstead, northwest of London, where she laid the cornerstone for a new church, Queen Elizabeth II visited a new housing development where she captured the cool and undisguised admiration of one of her young subjects.

For Generalissimo Franco, about to take off on his annual tuna-fishing expedition in the Mediterranean, the occasion was a more formal date: a party in El Pardo Palace for Carmen, his only granddaughter.

France's President Vincent Auriol entered the picture when the presidential train stalled on a hill during a tour of the war-damaged section of eastern France. While waiting for a second engine to come to the rescue, an onlooker took the opportunity to introduce a tiny citizen to his admiring President.

Elders & Experts

After the Democratic labor leaders thumbed down Vice President Alben Berkley, 74, as a presidential candidate, the New York Herald Tribune's Columnist Hy Gardner compiled a roster of some union oldsters who are still going strong: William Green, 79, John L. Lewis, 72, Philip Murray, 66, James C. Petrillo and David Dubinsky, both 60.

Near San Gabriel, Calif., old Athlete Jim Thorpe, 64, fell asleep and woke up with a broken nose and a bruised face when the truck in which he was riding rammed into the rear of a state highway vehicle.

The Patent Office in Washington announced that patent No. 2,204,004 had been granted to Elihu Root 3rd, 36-year-old grandson of the onetime Secretary of War and Secretary of State, and a graduate of Hamilton College who is now a free-lance engineer in Springfield, Vt. The patent: an optical device for taking minute and precise measurements for use in the machine-tool industry.

In Washington, F.B.I. Chief J. Edgar Hoover, 57, marked his 35th anniversary with the Justice Department. His celebration: a quiet and peaceful day at home away from the office.

An accounting filed in Manhattan's Surrogate Court listed the net estate left by the late Mammy Singer Al Jolson at $2,366,844. Among the bequests: trust funds of $1,000,000 for Erie, his fourth wife; $500,000 each to their adopted children Asa and Alicia; and $10,000 for Ethel Delmar, his second wife.

The wartime Vice President of the U.S., Henry A. Wallace, 63, stopped hoeing the strawberry plants on his South Salem, N. Y. farm long enough to tell a reporter that he was "very happy not to be connected with any party or candidate" this year. The candidate for his interest right now, said Wallace, is a new hybrid gladiolus seedling which he is developing. The flower, he explained, has "a very nice ruffle, if you know what that means."

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