Family Matters

Rita Hay worth, wife of pudgy Prodigy Orson Welles, wasn't sure whether she was going to have a baby or not. Various newspapermen said she was; a studio spokesman dated it November. Said Miss Hayworth disarmingly: "I hope it's true, but I don't know."

Ethel Mannin, blurtaceous English novelist (Sounding Brass, South to Samarkand), deplored as "stupid and cruel" the taboo against unmarried mothers. Said she, to the London Society for Sex Education and Guidance:* "A child can't be legal or illegal. It's there."

Charlie Chaplin's legal woes weathered two court actions. They cleared up in Los Angeles, where Joan Berry's charges that she had been deprived of her civil rights were dismissed. They clouded up in San Francisco, where the court refused to dismiss Joan's paternity suit.

The Hatfields and McCoys (". . . they wuz reckless mountain boys . . .") were discovered by American Magazine to be feuding no more./- Rooming together and working at a Maryland war plant June Hatfield, great-granddaughter of Clan Leader "Devil Anse" Hatfield, and Susie McCoy, great-granddaughter of Clan Leader Randall McCoy. They visit each other's families without resort to arms, and June plans to marry a real McCoy some day.

Serge Koussevitzky, famed Russian-born conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, received a touching "Bravo!" Wrote his 80-year-old sister Anyuta, from Russia: "Brother Serezha! Our family has had plenty of trouble. Our dear [brother] Nicholas perished in Leningrad in 1941 at the hands of the Fascist butchers. Only thou and I are left, my beloved brother. ... I have heard that thou, with thy work, also art helping our common cause, the destruction of our common enemy. . . . All my life I have been proud of thee and I shall be proud of thee until my last days. . . ."

Words of Wisdom

Frank Sinatra, bobbysocks Romeo, hospitalized with a bug in his throat and a temperature of 103 1/2, was cooled off by the London Times: "Mr. Sinatra is unknown in this country and is likely to continue to remain so."

Madeleine Carroll, who two years ago quit Hollywood to do war work, then went overseas on Red Cross duty, was something pretty special for S/Sgt. William W. Sharpe of Drexel Hill, Pa. to write home about: "Still confined to a wheelchair, but am thrilled every day when Madeleine Carroll takes me out for an airing."

James Aloysius Farley, speaking in and of Jersey City's Journal Square, whence Boss Frank Hague's brass-buttoned, blue-coated cossacks were once wont to chase orators who came there with the delusion that the whole U.S. enjoys free speech, all but busted his tongue through his cheek: "History is bound to note this spot as one of the battlegrounds where free speech was firmly established, together with the American way of life."

Presidential Problems

Eleanor Roosevelt's peregrinations have worried so many people so long that the Gallup poll finally caught up with them. Vox populi: too much peregrinating, 45%; okay, 36%; no opinion, 6%; none of their business, 13%.

Thomas Jefferson wrote a just-discovered letter that showed he had his troubles like anybody else. In a letter written during his third year in the White House, and found last week in a Virginia mountain cabin, the third U.S. President wrote: "If my note for (d) 558.16 paiable the 15th of Dec is still in your own hands, I should be very glad if it could either be postponed awhile or paid by monthly portions, as I find I shall be very hard pushed. ..."

Major General Edwin M. ("Pa") Watson, military aide and special jester to President Roosevelt, got a feathery jest in his cap: the President made him "Principal Chief of the Seminole Tribe of Indians, Okla."*

Give & Take

Pat di Cicco, cafe-famed as Gloria Vanderbilt's husband, also as a onetime "assistant wolf," took a double-barreled beating in a Manhattan nightclub. Di Cicco, an Army Air Forces lieutenant, was amusing himself by loudly abusing a small, meek newspaperman. A quiet Texan by the name of Benny Bickers objected. Di Cicco called him something, neglected to smile. Benny knocked him down. Di Cicco left the club, waited for Bickers in the street. When the Texan came out, di Cicco took off his coat, put up his dukes. Benny knocked him down again. What di Cicco learned the hard way: outweighed (by 35 lb.), outreached (by 4 in.), Benny is known as "perhaps the best hand-to-hand fighter anywhere near his size in Texas."

The Panchen Lama,* Buddha of Boundless Light for 10,000,000 Tibetans and Mongolians, had quite a time at his enthronement. Because the affair took place at Kum Bum Lamasery in remote Hwangyuan, China--which is practically out of this world--it took nearly three months for the full story to reach the U.S. Present at the enthronement was the Rev. Victor Guy Plymire, a longtime American missionary. After patiently waiting through eight hours of ceremony and gift-giving (the presents ranged from precious silver ornaments to a sheep stomach filled with butter), Missionary Plymire was finally permitted to take a picture (see cut) of the new Lama, six-year-old Tuteng Tueh-chi.

*For news of other learned societies, see SCIENCE. /-The famed West Virginia-Kentucky feud, which began with either1) an elopement or 2) a stolen pig shortly after the Civil War, reached a climax battle 20 years ago (47 killed, 100 wounded). *At the bottom of the scroll, the President hedged: "Valid if said Watson is a full-blooded Seminole Indian. I think he is." *Not to be confused with the Dalai Lama, temporal ruler of Tibet. The Panchen Lama is Tibet's spiritual ruler.

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