Tough All Over

In India, things were not going at all well for the Maharaja of Baroda. His 250 servants went out on strike for higher wages and union recognition.

The shifting tides of social acceptance were charted in the 1950 edition of Manhattan's Bowery Social Register (also known as The Almanac de Skid Row), blue book of U.S. hoboes. Blue-penciled out this year by Bowery News Editor Harry Baronian: Crown Prince Bozo, for conduct unbecoming a hobo; Frisco John, for abusing people who turned him down for a handout; Buffalo John, for taking a dental bridge from the mouth of a sleeping companion. In this year: Prince Robert de Rohan Courtenay, for inventing a new poetic medium called Pling Plong; Box-Car Betty, ex-hula dancer and snake charmer, for research indicating that the flavor of a cigar is enhanced if dipped occasionally in beer; Harvardman ('11) Joe Gould, perennial Greenwich Village drink-cadger and author of an uncompleted 9,000,000-word book (An Oral History of Our Time), for turning out a new couplet:

In the winter I'm a Buddhist;

In the summer I'm a nudist.

It took eleven hard-tackling New York cops to arrest famed Drop-Kicker Charles C. Brickley, 58, Harvard All-America (1912-13) and his 30-year-old son, Charles Brickley Jr., during an early-morning brawl in a Manhattan restaurant. According to testimony, the fight started when Brickley overheard someone say: "Is that old bald-headed so-and-so Charlie Brickley, the football player?"

Old Sweet Song

In the little town of Stuart, Fla., New York's ailing Mayor William O'Dwyer ended two months of speculation, rumors and denials by getting a license to marry Texas-born brunette Divorcee Elizabeth Sloan Simpson, 33, onetime model and more recently a department-store stylist. Miss Simpson chose a plain navy-blue suit for the ceremony this week. The couple planned to honeymoon aboard Industrial Engineer H. G. Matthews' yacht, Almar II, after a while head for Manhattan's Gracie Mansion, home of New York's mayors.

Diana Forbes-Robertson Sheean, 34, offered an explanation of why she did not invite her two daughters, Linda, 13, and Ellen, 9, to the wedding when she remarried the girls' father, bestselling, globetrotting Author Vincent Sheean, 50, in London, four years after their divorce: "It's so difficult to have children around at a time like this."

Strong-willed Maria del Carmen Franco y Polo, 23, only daughter of Spain's Generalissimo Francisco Franco, finally wore down her dad's long opposition to her leaving home. She was reported engaged in Madrid to Cristobal Martinez Bordiu y Bascaran, Marques de Villaverde, 28, a doctor in the Spanish army.

"I was offered a part last month, but ... I was too busy," mused photogenic Maureen O'Sullivan, 38, onetime movie mate of Tarzan and wife of Director John Farrow (Two Years Before the Mast) as she posed for a picture in Hollywood with 6-month-old daughter Stephanie (see cut), her sixth child. "Perhaps when the children are all grown I'll become a character actress."

The Road Ahead

The winning frankness of oldtime Cinemactor Jack Holt, 61, stole the show at a Los Angeles party celebrating the 35th anniversary of Cecil B. DeMille's and Jesse Lasky's first feature-length movie, The Squaw Man. Oldtimers who showed up included heavy-lidded Vamp Theda Bara, now a well-to-do matron (in A Fool There Was, 1914, she drove men to ruin); onetime Great Lover Francis X. Bushman, now a well-fed radio actor; airplane model Manufacturer Reginald Denny, Television Actress Mae Murray (whose waltzing with the late John Gilbert made The Merry Widow a 1925 silent hit). When a cameraman taking a group picture suggested that some of the oldtime male stars kneel in the front row, Holt cracked: "If you get us old guys down on one knee, who's going to get us up again?"

King George VI's left leg, which nearly had to be amputated last year because of arterial stoppage, was so far improved that he could walk and stand for long periods without discomfort, it was reported in London on his 54th birthday. He celebrated quietly at home (Buckingham Palace) by reading some 1,000 letters and telegrams of good wishes.

An automobile accident finally downed Colonel Robert Lee Scott Jr., 41, fighter pilot and author (God Is My Co-Pilot), near Columbus, Ga. With a fractured pelvis, he will be hospitalized for the next four months.

Machines are threatening man's chance for survival, Charles A. Lindbergh, 47, warned scientists and fellow aviators. Receiving the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy in Washington, he said that aviation was in much better shape when Orville and Wilbur Wright made their famous first flight in the rattletrap at Kitty Hawk: "While their minds were studying structures and the aerodynamics of flight their bodies were in contact with sun and earth and weather. We hear mariners speak nostalgically of the era of iron men and wooden ships. In a similar sense I sometimes feel that the decline of aviation began with the self-starter and the closed cockpit."

Heart of the Matter

Major General Lewis B. Hershey didn't seem to know his own strength. A number of young men in Washington who received letters on Hershey's official stationery tore open the envelopes with some apprehension and read with relief the enclosed greetings: "The Director of Selective Service wishes you a Very Merry Christmas and every good wish for 1950."

Pistol-packing Sicilian Bandit Chieftain Salvatore Giuliano allowed himself to be interviewed in his mountain hideout by nervy Italian Journalist Jacopo Rizza. The secret of how he has eluded marching columns of carabinieri who have been trying to kill him for the last five months: "We are never in groups larger than three or four ... in these mountains it is easier for three men to see a marching column than for a column to see three men."

In Cleveland, Count Felix von Luckner, 69, famed commander of the German raider Seeadler in World War I, was undismayed by the rigorous prospect of a three-month lecture tour of 52 cities. One quality is needed, he had decided, and he has it. He urged reporters to feel his steely muscles.

Poodle-haired Mary (South Pacific) Martin faced water-pinched New York's Dry Friday like a good pressagent. When it came time for her famous onstage shampoo scene (I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair), a fellow actor poured a gallon of club soda into the makeshift shower above her head, and saved a gallon of water.

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