Personal Problems

Lieut. General George S. Patton Jr. ended whispered speculation among his subordinates by explaining the mystery of the doughnut-shaped cushion he carried through the Battle of the Bulge. While the General stood, it circled his arm; when he sat, it was under him. The burning question was: had hard-riding old Georgie Patton finally gone soft? The explanation: on the night Rundstedt attacked, the General took a fall in his blacked-out headquarters, bruised his coccyx.

Adolf Hitler, whose rumored afflictions range from cerebral hemorrhage to an abnormal taste for cutting rugs with his bicuspids, was reported by the Stockholm Morgon-Tidningen to have a new ailment: ear trouble, brought on by last July's attempted assassination. Hitler's hearing, said Stockholm, is so impaired that he can "no longer judge the sound of his words, nor can he use tones of irony or contempt, or his famous false heartiness."

Henry Morgenthau, who as Secretary of the Treasury gets blamed for a lot of taxes but is himself a middle-aged taxpayer, spoke another unpopular mouthful. Urging stiff postwar taxes to retire the national debt (now $231,000,000,000), the 53-year-old Secretary said: "I think people of my generation--of my age--should realize that for the rest of our lives we will be paying high taxes. And I think we should."

Cultural Subjects

Louise Homer, Pittsburgh-born Metropolitan Opera contralto of 30 years ago, now the mother of six and grandmother of 15, was honored on her 50th year of marriage to Composer Sidney Homer at an "Evening of Music" given by Florida's Rollins College, where Mme. Homer will teach recipients of a new scholarship fund dedicated to her as a golden-wedding gift.

Franz Lehar, venerable (74), Hungarian-born Viennese operetta king, composer of Adolf Hitler's favorite operetta, The Merry Widow (1905), was reported under "house arrest" in his Vienna home. Aryan Lehar's only other reported brush with the Nazis occurred three years ago when he refused to obey Nazi orders to leave his Jewish wife.

Enrico Caruso Jr., son of the late great tenor, took a late plunge into what he hopes will be a "serious singing career," and did it the hard way--amid the smoke, clatter and twirling bare legs of a Buffalo nightspot. One conscientious nightclub reporter, mindful of his duty toward an illustrious musical name, gravely noted in Tenor Caruso's version of the Flower Song from Carmen a tendency to "flat in the upper register." But everybody agreed, after hearing Caruso's What a Difference a Day Made, that his schmalz was terrific.

Political Affairs

William Averell Harriman, rich, sports-loving U. S. Ambassador to Russia, finished second in a Moscow diplomatic corps competition: his hens laid fewer eggs than British Ambassador Sir Archibald Clark Kerr's.

Herbert Hoover, returning to Manhattan from a vacation with his family in California, gave out a one-sentence, stiff-collared statement: "The prospects for victory are certain; the prospects of lasting peace are discouraging."

Maurice Tobin, ex-Mayor of Boston (for six years, until last November's elections), parked his car at Boston's City Hall. Suddenly remembering his new job, he tramped the three blocks to the State House, where he now presides as Governor of Massachusetts.

Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, long absent from the headlines because of his secret war duties, received the Legion of Merit in a chatty, informal White House ceremony. Cited for "outstanding services" in surveying Pacific islands, the explorer was called "Dick" by the President, who remarked that the medal was "one of the loveliest ones we have." Said greying Admiral Byrd: "Thank you, Franklin."

Lord Alfred Douglas, 74, Victorian friend of Oscar Wilde, composer of Mayfairy verses, penned a warning to Winston Churchill: "I am writing ... as a dying man. ... I beg you to consider that if you let down the Poles, your own reputation . . . will be irretrievably damaged in the eyes of posterity."

Family Matters

Gypsy Rose Lee, belle-lettrist, ex-ecdysiast, ex-wife of Actor Alexander Kirkland, fondly regarded her one-month-old son and announced her considered view of motherhood: "It took a long time, but from now on, it's my hobby."

Fiorello LaGuardia, New York City's little Mayor, broadcast praise for his wife's "OPA pasta faggioli ... a perfect, well-balanced" noodles dish, cooked with "nice, brown kidney beans," escarole and onions. The starch-wary Mayor reported that pasta faggioli was so full of "the vitamins, the starches, and everything you need" that "when we have pasta . . . I have to go on a very strict diet for the next week."

Maria Manton, 20, flame-haired daughter of Marlene Dietrich, preparing to make her Broadway debut in a play called Foolish Notion, announced that she would stand on her own two legs--though they were not as shapely nor as celebrated as her mother's. Said Maria: "I have never done anything but be born to a famous mother. ... I want to get some place by myself. . . . That is why . . . I am not interested in movies."

William Hale ("Big Bill") Thompson, longtime mayor and boss of Chicago, who died last March leaving some $2,000,000 in safe deposit boxes but no will (TIME, April 10), made news again when $250,000 of the money changed hands in an out-of-court settlement. The quarter-million went to his former secretary-nurse, Ethabelle Green, who had sued for half the estate, claiming that Big Bill promised it to her in return for the "care and affection" she bestowed upon him "as a daughter" for twelve years before his death.

Paulette Goddard, critically ill with an abdominal pregnancy, was rushed to a Santa Monica hospital for an emergency operation, lost her baby (four months along), but was declared "out of danger" after receiving several blood transfusions.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, senior warden of St. James's Episcopal Church, Hyde Park, N.Y., was presented with a 120-year-old family Bible, once owned by the second wife of his maternal great-grandfather, Warren Delano. It was found in the attic of the old Delano house in New Bedford, Mass.

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