Jimmy Gets It

It is no secret among close associates of James Roosevelt and his wife that the couple have not found the harmony they expected since Jimmy's migration to Hollywood. . . . He has been seen in company with Miss Romelle Schneider, the nurse who aided him in his fight to regain his health after an operation at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. . . . It is reported that Mr. Roosevelt will make the first move about getting a divorce.

One evening last fortnight blonde Hedda Hopper, onetime actress, now a Hollywood gossip columnist for the Los Angeles Times, tapped out these lines on her typewriter and thereby set a new record for keyhole journalism. No secret was Hedda Hopper's news about the President's eldest son: Walter Winchell had hinted at it months ago, rumors had drifted about Hollywood and Washington ever since James Roosevelt became Vice President of Samuel Goldwyn, Inc., leaving his wife Betsy (daughter of the late, great Surgeon Harvey Gushing) in the East.

But Hedda Hopper, with this story up her sleeve, heard that a rival columnist was about to break it. On a Saturday night at nine o'clock, with three hours to make the deadline for the Times early-morning editions, she picked up a telephone and tried to get James Roosevelt at his home in Beverly Hills. Two hours later she was still ringing, had got no answer. So Hedda Hopper sat down and wrote her story.

At 11:15 Miss Hopper stepped up to the Roosevelt door, rang and rang, roused up a friend, who roused up James Roosevelt. Samuel Goldwyn's Vice President appeared in a woollen bathrobe, one foot slippered, the other bare. Said he graciously: "Oh, hello, Hedda." Miss Hopper handed him the story. James Roosevelt studied it a moment, shrugged and.said:

"Hedda, you know how rumors are. Since Betsy returned to the East to live near her parents and friends, people have been trying to attach some importance to our geographic separation. More than that I'm afraid I can't say."

More than that he did not have to say. Hedda Hopper shook his hand understandingly, hopped in her car, drove straight to the office of the Los Angeles Times. There she wrote a new lead, quoting James Roosevelt's words. The front page was replated, pushing aside news of the war in Europe. At four in the morning on a quiet Sunday last week Hedda Hopper's story was on the street. A characteristic California story, it ranked as the Pacific Coast's newsbeat of the year.

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