The rich and powerful, as usual, were fighting headaches.

Divorce finally got right into Hollywood's throne room. Louis B. Mayer himself was sued. MGM's 61-year-old, fun-loving chief was charged with desertion by his 61-year-old, home-loving wife, Margaret, after nearly 43 years of marriage. They had been separated for the past three years; everything was pretty well arranged now, and there would probably be no shouting in the courtroom. Mrs. Mayer would get a cash settlement--much more, said her attorney, than the $2,000,000 one tipster guessed at.

Vincent Astor, who was christened William Vincent Astor, went to court in Manhattan to stop a Vincent Astor Williams from doing business as the Vincent Astor Purchasing Co. Retorted Williams: his grandmother was Vincent Astor's great aunt, and he had just as much right to drop the Williams from one end of his name as Astor had to drop the William from the other end.

Powerful Primo Camera, year-long heavyweight champ in the early '30s, was having trouble with his hands. In Knoxville, Tenn., he shook a sports promoter's hand, broke it--the promoter's--in two places. In Miami, Mrs. Rosalie B. Marano sued him for $25,000, charged that he had pawed her in an auto last February and she still hurt.

Joe Louis was having better luck. Police finally recovered his 1946 Cadillac, stolen in deepest Harlem last October, and charged a dining-car waiter with the crime. The waiter, they said, declared that he absolutely would not have stolen it if he had known it was Louis'.

Pen in Hand

George Bernard Shaw, at 90, had an unfinished new play, but he might burn it, he said, instead of bothering to complete it. Shaw's tentative title for it: Piffle.

William Saroyan, long silent, was also working on a new play, whose title and subject suggested that he is still daring if not so young (38). The title: Lunatic Arena. The subject: "right now" and "everybody."

Marcel Pagnol (Topaze, The Baker's Wife, Harvest) became the first cinema writer admitted to the august French Academy. At 52, he is a veritable child prodigy among the Academy's ancients. One of the ceremonial questions put to Pagnol, who makes his characters talk like characters: "Can you write French?"

Brooks Emeny, 45-year-old Cleveland writer on foreign affairs (Mainsprings of World Politics), and president of the Cleveland Council on World Affairs, was made president of the Foreign Policy Association, top-ranking citizens' group for the study of international problems. His predecessor: 72-year-old Major General Frank R. McCoy (ret.).

Adolphe Menjou, the veteran Hollywood fashion plate, was writing his memoirs. While he was thinking things over, he let go a considered judgment: "Not only are movies worse than they used to be; one might even say that now they are no good at all."

In Manhattan. Best Seller Stuart Cloete (The Turning Wheels), who used to live in South Africa, prepared to go back for a year's stay. He explained: "There are too many vibrations here."

Women at Work

The beauties were up to their pretty elbows in breadwinning.

Paulette Goddard took her own Hollywood hairdresser to London to keep her glamorous for a British film. So twelve local hairdressers walked off the lot in protest. Picture production stopped for three days--at a cost of $12,000 a day to Producer Alexander Korda. Miss Goddard kept her hairdresser.

Barbara Stanwyck found the world almost too much with her. At a London premiere she got separated from handsome husband Robert Taylor by a mob of worshipful women. Police had to rescue the pair, ride horses through the crowd to make way. Miss Stanwyck fainted. Taylor got a black eye. "It was the first time since our marriage," said Miss Stanwyck, "that Robert and I have been parted." Miss Stanwyck was doubling as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, which sometimes ran her observations on Page One. Sample: "The British love to tell you how awful things are. But they don't like you to say it first."

Linda Darnell celebrated quitting time on Forever Amber by handing goodies around to her fellow workers--a diamond-&-sapphire ring to Director Otto Preminger, a gold wristwatch (with diamonds) to her wardrobe girl, a gold money clip (in the shape of a folding chair, with his name on it in diamonds) to her cameraman, and a round-trip ticket to Honolulu to her hairdresser. Now, said Miss Darnell, she had had enough work. In four years, she explained, she and her busy cameraman-husband, Peverell Marley, had spent only three days together, and it had nearly broken up their marriage.

The People's Choice

James Michael Curley, Mayor of Boston, ex-Governor of Massachusetts, ex-U.S. Congressman, possessor of the Order of St. Sophia (Serbia), the Medal of Gratitude (France), and the Order of the Rising Sun (Japan), let it out that he had added yet another spray of laurel to his fillet. Dartmouth College and Dean Academy prep school, said the Mayor (still at large pending his appeal from a mail-fraud conviction), had asked him for recordings of his speeches, for the instruction of students in oratory.

In Los Angeles, Governor Earl Warren drew the honor of opening the 47th Annual American Bowling Congress. While the flashbulbs popped, the Governor opened Congress with a bang--and held center-stage by the skin of his teeth while Comedian Harold Lloyd flashed his own.

Words & Music

Laurltz Melchior, the Met's heroic tenor, fought heroically through a blizzard to sing in Bloomington, Ind., but it was no use. He tried to fly from Chicago, but the planes were grounded. So he set out by auto. An hour later he was stuck in a snowdrift. Bloomington presently heard from him by phone, too late. He had discovered that he was fighting his way toward Bloomington, Ill., 160 miles away from Indiana's Bloomington.

Arturo Toscanini, who had made it plain that he wanted no demonstrations, passed his 80th birthday quietly at home as he wished; but the NBC Symphony sneaked in a demonstration anyway. Delivered to his home, and played at dinner: a special recording (the Minuet from Schubert's A Minor Quartet), preceded and followed by recorded congratulations.

Ernst ("Putzi") Hanfstaengl, Hitler's onetime pianist-in-waiting, who spent most of the war in Allied hands, was back in Germany and suing the fatherland for damages. He had fled for his life in 1937, he told the Bavarian State Commission for Persecutees, and he wanted $16,150 compensation.

Frank Sinatra prepared to get out of a rut with a majestic leap. In Hollywood's The Miracle of the Bells he would play a priest, and not sing a note.

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