Nobody's Business

Where the Vice President lives is of small concern to the U. S. Government, which gives him $15,000 per annum and leaves him to find his own quarters. When Vice President Charles Curtis established himself, his official-hostess sister, Mrs. Edward Everett Gann, and Mr. Gann, at the fashionable Mayflower Hotel, Washington busybodies eyed the apartment (foyer, double-sized drawing room, dining room for 26 guests, smoking room, library, four bedrooms, two servants' rooms, kitchen, furnished at a cost of $75,000), ascertained its normal rental ($22,500 per year), and hastily concluded that Mr. Curtis was a free guest at the hotel for advertising purposes. A story to that effect went the rounds.

His nerves already raw from the public interest taken in his social battle in behalf of Mrs. Gann (TIME, April 15), the Vice President last week exploded on the matter of his Mayflower rent. Said he with hot feeling:

"I know the story! ... I want to denounce it as a miserable lie. I wish I could see the scoundrel who started it. . I wish people would mind their own affairs and leave mine alone. ... Of course I do not pay the regular rates for a great big hotel apartment. What I do pay is nobody's damned business! I can afford to pay what they charge me."

The Vice President angrily explained that the Willard Hotel, where lived Thomas R. Marshall and Calvin Coolidge as Vice Presidents, had "made a proposition" to him of free rent, which he rejected. Continuing, he said:

"Then the Mayflower people came to see me. After looking over their rooms I accepted their proposition. ... I didn't haggle. ... I pay my bills regularly and expect to pay them every month I live here. Nobody's giving me anything."

Manager R. L. Pollio of the Mayflower tactfully announced that the Curtis rent was "something around $10,000 a year" and added: "We went after the Vice President and Mrs. Gann with the most attractive proposition we could afford. . . . We are glad to have him here. ... It is an honor and, to be perfectly frank, it is worth a lot of money in advertising. ..."

Of far greater social import than the problem of the Vice President's official hostess, is the problem of night-club hostesses in free-&-easy Manhattan, where Assistant Attorney Mabel Walker Willebrandt lately lost her Prohibition cases against the two outstanding personages of nocturnal fame, Mary Louise ("Texas") Guinan and Helen Morgan. Manhattanites were interested last week in the following statement by Miss Guinan:

"I've been congratulated on my acquittal by thousands of people. Why, only a few nights ago, Harry Curtis, son of the Vice President of the U. S., came to my club and congratulated me from the centre of the floor. He is of the type of people who know that I am an entertainer for good wholesome fun."