Earnest Crusades

Dr. Ella Alexander Boole, indefatigable world president of the W.C.T.U., got the idea that liberated Europeans are giving U.S. troops a Dionysiac welcome, deplored it: "Why, they're drinking wine. Wine! They're offering our boys jugs of wine. They could just as easily have given them fruit juices."

Sally Rand, titillating terpsichorean, whose art consists of publicly manipulating two outsized feather fans, wriggled out of a $150,747 damage suit. She said she had a right to "some privacy," hence a right to bite and scratch two would-be photographers who had clicked a shutter at a slow-moving fan. A California court agreed.

William J. Gallagher, 69, freshman New Deal Congressman from Minnesota, onetime Minneapolis street sweeper, warned Washington newsmen to stop snickering at his unstatesmanlike past. Fumed Representative Gallagher: "I am not ashamed of having worked. . . . One young man . . . wrote a story about me being stoop-shouldered and having gnarled hands. Well, I'll bet I can lick hell out of him."

Domestic Affairs

Martha Raye, bray-voiced cinemactress, reported to police that thieves had broken into her Hollywood home, made off with: 1) a $6,000 mink coat, 2) a $1,500 silver fox coat, 3) a $350 blue fox coat, 4) a $300 leopard coat.

Donald M. Nelson, 56, Presidential assistant and ex-WPBoss just divorced after 18 years of marriage, did not deny his rumored engagement to his onetime secretary: curvesome, dimpled, brunette Marguerite Coulbourn, 26, Georgetown University's 1939 "Queen of the Campus."

Gloria Vanderbilt di Cicco, 20, poor little rich girl whose legal troubles began at ten in a noisy custody squabble between her socialite mother (Mrs. Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt) and her sculptress aunt (the late Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney), planned another trip to court. This time she will ask a formal separation from her nightclub-brawling, ex-Army-lieutenant husband, Pat di Cicco, 35, actors' agent. Married at 17, Gloria once observed: "What can one say of a first marriage except that it's wonderful?" Approaching her 21st birthday and a $4.5 million inheritance, she broke the news to Di Cicco by Manhattan-to-Hollywood telephone. Then she plunged with new determination into her painting career, in preparation for a one-woman show of still lifes.

The Hon. Gerald David Lascelles (rhymes with tassels), 20, nephew of Britain's George VI, was praised by his regimental sergeant major as a democratic, model soldier. There was only one complaint against Private Lascelles: his superiors could not persuade him to make the usual $4-a-week allotment to his mother, the Princess Royal.

Colonel Elliott Roosevelt, tidying up (by proxy: he is in England) his Dutch Branch ranch near Fort Worth, shipped eight Arabian horses (one stallion, four brood mares, three colts) to his bride in California, Cinemactress Faye Emerson. The shipment went by rail freight.

Cultural Pursuits

Richard T. ("Dick") Frankensteen pudgy vice president of the C.I.O.'s potent United Automobile Workers, all-out New Deal orator, announced that he had $65,000 backing for a light opera called Gypsy Moon (book and lyrics by Dick Frankensteen). Said he: "The operetta has no connection with the U.A.W.-C.I.O. Ever since I was in college, I've had a desire to produce a stage show."

Captain Eddie Rickenbacker gave some histrionic advice to Cinemactor Fred MacMurray, who will play the lead in Captain Eddie, a Hollywood version of Rickenbacker's life: "When you come to the love scenes, don't be too flamboyant, but be plenty persistent--because I was surely that."

Frank ("The Voice") Sinatra, whose movie, Step Lively, is making the rounds in unoccupied Europe, caused nary a swoon in Stockholm. One critic reported: "Sinatra's a nice boy . . . but there doesn't seem to be any danger of Sinatra fever."

LeRoy J. Petrillo, son of the A.F. of L.'s contentious little Music Czar James C. Petrillo, sat in a 6th Armored Division tank in France, recalled his peacetime job as music librarian at Chicago's radio station WCFL, pondered the postwar world. Said G.I. Petrillo: ". . . I don't ever again want to fight anybody. I'll leave the fighting to poppa."

Vicki Baum, author of glossy, sexy novels about fashionable internationals (Grand Hotel), denounced her newest, Once in Vienna, as her first attempt, written at the age of 15: ". . . I never authorized the publication . . . or the title of this adolescent, utterly dated and ridiculous sin of my early youth."

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