Off the Chest

Hatchetman Westbrook Pegler, already on record as "anti-democratic," set his readers straight on another point: "I should like to release those delegates who have been loyal to me on the ground that I was not anti-union but only anti-communist and anti-racketeer . . . Yes, I am now anti-union."

With a chaperone in tow, Bebe (Miss America) Shopp, 18, did a bit of touring in Europe. (Breathed a goggling French customs officer: "Quelle femme!") In London, Bebe came out foursquare against false bosoms: "I don't wear them [myself] and I never will. A girl must be her very own self. Palsies aren't honest." The U.S. beauty (bust 37, hips 36) also took a swipe at the "French-type" bathing suit: "A dab here, and a bit right down here and back there." Said she righteously: "So much unrestrained nudity has a bad moral effect on men, as well as people generally."

After four years of Soviet captivity, shabby, 61-year-old Erika Raeder, wife of Nazi Grand Admiral Erich Raeder (now serving a life term for war crimes), turned up in Berlin and unburdened herself to newsmen. The enigmatic Russians had fed her caviar in Moscow, starved her in Minsk, kept her peeling potatoes in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Then, just as unaccountably, they had let her go.

In Highlands, N.J., 42-year-old Gertrude Ederle, after 23 years still holder of the women's speed record for swimming the English Channel, wished the best of luck to 17-year-old Shirley May France, training for the same feat. In England, Shirley May primly assured the world that there would be a bathing suit under her coat of grease.

On the Beam

Hollywood-bound for this week's wedding of her son, Cinemactor James Stewart, 41, to Socialite Mrs. Gloria Hatrick McLean, 31, Mrs. Elizabeth Stewart was plainly pleased at his abdication as the town's most eligible bachelor. Said she: "I'm so very glad that Jimmy is getting married. I was kind of worried that he wouldn't."

Retired General Lucius D. Clay, former U.S. military governor in Germany, got a new civilian assignment: Manhattan bank director. He will serve on the board of the Marine Midland Trust Co. of New York.

Off on one of her regular trips to Mexico City, Roulette Goddord swapped sweet nothings at Los Angeles Airport with a new leading man, Clark Gable. Purred Paulette: "Goodbye, sugar." Cooed Clark: "Goodbye, honey." For newsmen taking down the dialogue, Gable had another line with the old familiar ring: "Just say we're a couple of longtime friends."

Herbert Clark Hoover, who has known less amiable Congresses, got a present from Capitol Hill to mark his 75th birthday this week. Both Houses unanimously passed a resolution thanking the former President for his "devoted service to his country and to the world."

By a 6-to-5 vote, San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House trustees decided to eat their harsh words banning Norwegian Soprano Kirsten Flagstad from an autumn engagement. Without her, it seemed, the box-office outlook was too dark. In Salzburg, where she was still as popular as in prewar days, Flagstad magnanimously announced: "I will accept the invitation . . . despite the incident."

In Red Rock Park, Colo., Met Tenor Lauritz Melchior got full-dress honors from 250 nudists in convention nearby. To hear him sing, they put their clothes on.

In the Family

Washington society noted an unlamented loss in Mrs. Harry S. Truman. At a party for Mrs. Perle Mesta, new U.S. Minister to Luxembourg, and Mrs. Georgia Neese Clark, new Treasurer of the U.S., Bess Truman displayed a new silhouette, 20 pounds slimmer than the old one. Her dietary secret: eating just what the President does, but passing up the salt.

In London, Novelist Graham (The Heart of the Matter) Greene was working on the biography of a distant relative named Robert Louis (Treasure Island) Stevenson.

When smoke and cries of "Fire!" filled a Norwich, Conn, summer theater, Actress Sarah Churchill, daughter of Winston Churchill, ran true to the family form for crises. Stepping out of her role in The Philadelphia Story, she calmed the audience and told a few jokes while some burning rubbish was doused backstage.

Tough All Over

Premier Joseph Stalin could ponder the news that the city fathers of Alost, Belgium had changed the postliberation name of Stalin Avenue back to the original, St. Anna.

Bob Hope took an ad lib fall off a barrel on a Hollywood set, landed in the hospital with a badly wrenched back.

Recalling that he was once a British secret agent, Moscow's Literary Gazette pilloried Author Somerset Maugham as a creature of Wall Street bosses in the "spiritual disarmament of the masses." The paper also took a dim view of Literary Lights T. S. Eliot, Stephen Spender and Edith and Osbert Sitwell as servants of "American cosmopolite expansionism."

After nine years on the Supreme Court at an annual salary of $25,000, Justice Frank Murphy left an estate in Washington of $2,100--of which $1,600 was due his hotel.

In St. Louis, Brooklyn Dodger Pitcher Elwin ("Preacher") Roe wondered whether he should have invited his father, Dr. Charles E. Roe, to come up from Viola, Ark. to watch him work. The Preacher went to the showers after six innings against the Cardinals, and father Roe went home minus $80 lifted by a ballpark pickpocket.

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