Derring-Do

When Sonja Henie stepped off the plane after a Brussels-to-Paris flight, she was set upon by 18 French customs officials. "They marched me," Skater Henie reported, "right into a shed . . . where a lady customs agent with a small mustache told me to undress . . . everything, including my stockings and slippers. . . . They strewed the contents of my eight suitcases all over the place." Those two undeclared $100 bills that customs men found in her purse and confiscated? Sonja twittered: "It was just mad money I have carried for years in case of emergency, and I had forgotten all about it."

At the first clang of the fire alarm, the Duke of Windsor flung out of his suite in Manhattan's Waldorf Towers and up two flights to Baron Egmont van Zuylen van Nuyvelt's apartment. The Baron & friends, in a hot game of gin rummy, had overlooked a blaze in the bedroom. The visiting fireman (in dinner jacket, black tie) fell to "with a will for five minutes," it was reported, helped hotel employees drag a hose to the conflagration. Too late: the Baroness' $2,000 mink was just a pile of singed hair.

Carlo Batero, a cattle breeder in Santa Fe Province, Argentina, is really Vittorio Mussolini, reported Buenos Aires' EI Mundo. "Well-informed sources," the paper said, are sure that the late Duce's son arrived in January on a freighter and bought a great big. estancia, which he calls "New Italy."

The Way Things Are

"Life," mused Grock, the famed Swiss clown, "is lousy." After 67 years of it, the greatest grimacier of them all was still in harness (see cut) at Paris' Cirque d'Hiver. "Most of the old clowns have died," he grumbled, "and no new ones have come up because this generation is no good.. . . We are no longer a civilized people but cannibals. . . . People are eating each other up, everything has gone to hell."

"Life," said Charles Chaplin, on his 58th birthday, "begins at 50. ... The middle years are the mellow ones [without] agonies and tensions." Next day, a Manhattan court recorded a $6,450,000 damage suit against him. After seven years of brooding about the matter, Author Konrad Bercovici claimed that Charlie had "pirated" a Bercovici yarn as the basis of The Great Dictator.'

Several Hollywood experts wanted the world to know who is responsible for all that glamor. For instance, when Ingrid Bergman first came to Hollywood, she had to use an onion to bring on the tears. With the help of the make-up men, she had learned to use a menthol inhaler. One technician recalled that he had successfully taped back one of Alan Ladd's ears (the other one is all right). Another had taped both of Frank Sinatra's ears to minimize his "handle-cup appearance."

Affairs of State

Nancy Lilienthal, 22-year-old daughter of the new chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Committee, quit her Labor Department job. Father, she said, thought that "one of us working for the Government is enough."

Ex-Secretary of State James F. Byrnes was making himself a future as a, has-been. He sold six articles of diplomatic reminiscing (a rumored $10,000 apiece) to the Satevepost, and a half-completed book to Harpers. Then he hung up his shingle in the Washington law office of Hogan & Hartson.

Betty Crump, granddaughter of Tennessee's Boss Ed Crump, was named Queen of the Memphis Cotton Carnival. The Memphis Commercial Appeal was ecstatic for two columns. Sample: "Her beauty is reflective of the Deep South . . . freshness and spontaneity, naturalness and lingering charm."

Lewis Douglas, in London less than six weeks as the new U.S. Ambassador, had already started a trade war. Hearing somehow that His Excellency likes to bike, 60 British manufacturers immediately tangled sprockets over who should present him with a custom-built British wheel. While they were debating the matter, a Yankee outfit (Manhattan's Abercrombie & Fitch) air-expressed Douglas an American bike. His diplomatic decision: "I'll find it hard to ride two bikes at once, but I shall receive both gratefully."

Lllibet, Heiress Presumptive to the British Throne, came of age. Twenty-one guns in Capetown (where the Royal Family is visiting) boomed the event.

Presents clunked in. From "Papa": a colonelcy in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. From the Government: a raise--$24,000 to $60,000 a year. From South Africa: 400 diamonds valued at $80,000. Half a million of her sister Girl Guides contributed a penny apiece for a little surprise.

Words gushed out from all directions; though the word everyone was waiting to hear--that Princess Elizabeth was formally engaged to ex-Prince Philip of Greece --was not spoken. Prime Minister Attlee cabled: "Simple dignity . . . wise understanding . . . have endeared you to all classes. . . ." London's Daily Worker sneeringly recalled "her only recorded political pronouncement" (made when she was seven): "that . . . she would have a law passed granting holidays for horses."

Elizabeth herself spoke over the radio to the Empire: "... I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong. But I shall not have the strength to carry out this resolution alone unless you join in it with me; as I now invite you to do. I know that your support will be unfailingly given. God help me to make good my vow. And God bless all of you who are willing to share in it."

Postscripts

Found: in the rugged hills of the Indo-Burmese border near Imphal: the remains of Major General Orde Charles Wingate (the "Lawrence of Burma"), organizer of Wingate's Raiders, who died there in a 1944 plane crash.

White-haired Princess Hermine, 59, widow of Kaiser Wilhelm II, did some reminiscing. "The Kaiser," she recalled, "was a wonderful man . . . very sad about the [second] war, and detested and distrusted Hitler." She herself was living in Frankfurt an der Oder in the Russian zone. She had "lost everything" except two tables and a chair, but she is still addressed by close friends as "Your Majesty."

Grey-haired Grace Coolidge, 68, also contributed a footnote to the history books. In his latter days, she disclosed, "Silent Cal"* sometimes didn't say a word for two months. "There is no greater training for a woman," she pointed out, "than to live with a man who does not speak for two months. . . . But," she insisted, "he had his moments. He really did."

* By actual word-count, Calvin Coolidge was one of the most publicly garrulous Presidents in U.S. history, up to his time.

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