By a Little Finger

As the time of the coronation draws nearer & nearer, that bright, brittle corner of London known as Mayfair becomes more conscious of its intimacy with royalty, more jealous of its standing. Last week Mayfair's tongues were wagging, and they all seemed to be saying that no one in all of Mayfair is striving more mightily to shine in the reflected dazzle of the crown jewels than that personable American named Douglas Fairbanks Jr. "He simply becomes electric when there is any royalty around," said one of the actor's friends. "Entree into the Fairbankses' home," wrote a catty columnist in the Daily Sketch last week, "is a hundred times more difficult than getting a ticket for the coronation."

In the past few years, Doug, who calls himself an "international commuter," and his Virginia-born second wife (the former Mrs. G. Huntington Hartford, who succeeded Joan Crawford) have been more & more selective about the guests they choose to share their dining room. Abandoned are the ostentatious parties for 300 or more which Doug once gave in honor of such friends as Noel Coward and Earl Mountbatten of Burma. At No. 28, The Boltons, in fashionable South Kensington, the Fairbankses now confine themselves to more intimate affairs with a guest list whittled down to a mere 30 or 40. "There's no point in inviting people you don't get a chance to visit with," says Host Fairbanks, and a liberal sprinkling of titles, of course, is an essential condiment.

No Sir for the Knight. Ambitious Doug Fairbanks Jr., at 43, has come a long way since he was merely the son of a famous father. Matching Senior's success in both Mayfair (the first Fairbanks took a British peeress for his third wife) and moviedom, Junior has managed as well to find fame & fortune as a dabbler in many other arts, including writing, painting, warfare, diplomacy and the cultivation of friends in high places all around the world. Franklin Roosevelt died on the eve of a scheduled appointment in which Lieut. Commander Fairbanks, U.S.N.R., was to have explained a plan to smuggle Doug and Allied agents by submarine into Japan, there to get in touch with the Dowager Empress (an old Fairbanks friend) and thus end the war. "The only way to plan a combined operation peacefully," said one British admiral, "is to include Fairbanks in the project from the start."

Doug, always an expert swashbuckler on the silver screen, earned the British D.S.C. as the only U.S. officer to command a flotilla of raiding craft for Mountbatten's Commandos, a chestful of other medals for service in seven major campaigns, and an honorary Knighthood in the Order of the British Empire for "furthering Anglo-American amity." When he got his knighthood, his children prepared him a surprise--a leather case engraved "Sir Douglas Fairbanks." The new knight took it in stride when he learned that foreigners are not permitted to bear the prefix "Sir." "Oh, never mind about titles," he said. But he did take up a knight's coat of arms from the College of Arms.

Less honored denizens of Mayfair soon found characteristic ways of expressing their ill-concealed envy at the American's rocketlike rise in their rarefied atmosphere. At the bar in White's, the most exclusive club in London, it became the churlish fashion to describe a badly mixed cocktail by saying: "It tastes as if Douglas had been polishing at least half his medals in it." Not long ago, Fairbanks in impeccable white tie & tails strode into White's with a full complement of medals and orders gleaming on his chest. An effete British voice broke the hushed silence. "Enter Captain Hornblower," it said.

No Light for the Queen. Feline Mayfair smacked its lips in anticipation of revenge at last when it heard that Doug was trying to persuade his old Mediterranean Theater crony Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, to bring his wife round to The Boltons for "a jolly time." Surely, not even Fairbanks could bring that off. But last November the Queen accepted. The Fairbankses were in a state of jitters all day before the dinner. It was not eased when an unidentified voice, possibly a hoaxter, called to say that the power company was going to have to shut off their electricity that evening for emergency reasons. The lights stayed on, but a doctor rushed over before dinner to administer a sedative to the frantic host.

The party itself was not an unqualified success. Elizabeth found a crowd of rubbernecks waiting in the street outside when she arrived, and sat in stiff annoyance through most of the evening. Then somehow the news of her visit got into the Times's social calendar next day. Since the Times seldom makes such an announcement unless the news is received from the persons directly concerned, society was in an uproar. But the Fairbankses had at least the satisfaction of knowing that Mayfair's indignation was mixed with a good measure of pure envy.

Last week the U.S. was getting a chance to sample the Fairbanks charm via TV. "He brings to a bottle of beer a global approach." said one New York critic after watching Fairbanks do a filmed commercial. Meanwhile, the beer was keeping Doug busy and bringing a tidy flood of dollars to Britain and to No. 28, The Boltons. "Socially and diplomatically," said Douglas Fairbanks Jr., "I find myself walking on a long tightrope. I have nearly slipped off it several times, but I managed to hang on by a little finger."

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