Thoughts & Afterthoughts

In Manhattan to plug a new movie (Trio) adapted from three of his short stories, Somerset Maugham told reporters that his writing career was almost, but not quite, over: "If I think of an occasional little piece I will write it. When you have written for a great many years, it's a habit you get into and rather hard to break, and if I don't sit at my writing table each morning, I don't know exactly what to do with myself."

Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, after two months of wild boar and gazelle hunting in Iran and the Himalayas,was back home with some wildflower seeds for his Wallowa mountain hideout in Oregon, and some traveler's impressions: "India is bristling with ideas, projects and programs. It reminds me very much of the first term under Roosevelt."

"The time to celebrate is when you're admitted to the family," said Irish-born Cinemactress Greer Garson (now Mrs. Elijah E. Fogelson) as she slipped into Fort Worth to apply for U.S. citizenship.

World Citizen Garry Davis, who renounced his citizenship in 1948 to plump for a world without boundaries, decided that he wanted to be a U.S. citizen after all. Back from Haiti where he had gone in protest against "American intervention in Korea," he penned a plea to the U.S. Attorney General asking if his U.S. birth and war record would be enough "to bypass the time usually required by an immigrant to become a citizen . . ."

The late Sherwood (Winesburg, Ohio) Anderson was a hard man to tap for a free book, according to the current Saturday Review of Literature. Answering the Chicago Historical Society's request for a copy of his novel Marching Men, Rebel Anderson wrote, in 1917: ". . . I am not a popular writer, at least the royalty checks from my publishers do not indicate that I am. My books are seriously discussed by our American deep-sea thinkers but they are not bought by the man in the street . . . Make the publishers give you one if you can. Don't tackle the defenseless writer . . . I'll be hanged before I'll give any institution a copy of a book I write."

With a sharp eye for a competitor's product, Cinemogul Darryl F. Zanuck, back from getting a new movie rolling in Germany, had a prediction: "I would say if the political and military situation remain the same, some of our strongest competition two years from now will come from the German film market."

In his Swiss chalet at New Paltz, N.Y., Oscar (Tschirky) of the Waldorf, semi-retired since 1943, ordered his 84th birthday dinner: boiled beef with boiled potatoes. Said he: "The average American still likes plain cooking."

Even the thought of ending segregation in publuc schools made Georgia's Governor Herman Talmadge hot under the galluses. Said he: "There are not enough troops or police in the U.S. to enfore such an order."

After her year-old son, Benjamin Briggs Goodrich, was christened in San Antonio's St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Cinemactress Olivia de Havilland (Mrs. Marcus Goodrich) announced that little Ben was to grow up to be a Supreme Court Justice "because justice is so important in the world."

Plus & Minus

Broadway Star Ethel (The Member of the Wedding) Waters recalled, for the Ladies Home Journal, some of her own life story which in the Negro slums of Chester, Pa.: "I never was a child. . . I was born out of wedlock. . . By the time I was seven, I knew all there was to know about sex and could outcurse any steveore. . .I knew that I was a bastard and what that meant. I've never in my whole life minded being a bastard. I've always found it can work both ways. If I wanted pity, I got it because I was illegitimate. And when I didn't want it and was mean and nasty, I always could say, 'Well, what can you expect of an old bastard like me?' . . . A long, hard way I've come indeed, but it's been a great life."

At Scotland's stylish Perth Hunt Races, Princess Margaret, playing no favorites, appeared with two escorts, both "friendly rivals" for her hand: tweedy, kilted Lord Ogilvy, 24, son of the Earl of Airlie; and the Earl of Dalkeith, 27, heir of the Duke of Buccleuch (see cut).

After a ten-minute hospital visit with George Bernard Shaw, who is still mending, Virginia-born Lady Astor decided that his other friends were being too friendly, should pray for him but leave him alone. After all, said she: "His wife left him to me and I promised I'd always look after him."

Japan's Crown Prince Akihito, 16, now a junior in high school, started a new semester with a load of work: French, economic history, natural science, world history, history of Japanese literature, geometry, ethics, English, current affairs.

Calling at the White House, Duke Ellington presented Fellow Pianist Harry Truman with the latest Ellington score, Portrait of New York (commissioned by Arturo Toscanini, to be played Christmas night in Carnegie Hall).

For behaving himself in Eichstaett labor camp, Hans Fritzsche, 50, Hitler's onetime radio mouthpiece and No. 2 man to Progaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, was freed after serving almost four years of his nine-year denazification sentence. He slipped quietly away to Nuernburg.

A paternity suit for the support of a daughter, filed one Nancy Nyi against former Nationalist Premier of China Sun Fo, was thrown out by a Hong Kong court. Nancy's appliation, said the magstrate, "had been misconceived."

The Brimming Cup

From a California court came a blue note for lute-voiced Frank Sinatra: there would be no divorce. After eleven years of marriage, wife Nancy won a separate maintenance suit and a third of Frankie's $1,000,000-a-year income.

Stored in a Liverpool warehouse, until she can figure out what to do with it: a 447-lb. bale of raw cotton wrapped in red plaid, a gift to Princess Elizabeth from the cotton farmers of Edinburg, Texas.

To the biggest banker of all, Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder, the American Bankers Association presented an engrossed, illuminated scroll for "Services as a citizen, a banker and a public servant."

Back from trouping the paddy fields of Korea, where he mammy-shouted through 42 shows in two weeks, Al Jolson had a beaming embrace for wife Erie (see cut), and a booming word for his public: "Know what it feels like to be back? I'm going to look up my income tax and see if I paid enough. Those guys are wonderful."

Onetime office-boy David Sarnoff, who rose to be board chairman of the Radio Corp. of America, was made an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by the University of Louisville.

At his home in Washington's Wardman Park Hotel, former Secretary of State Cordell Hull planned to celebrate a quiet 79th birthday, the same as all other days, he said, "watching events from the sidelines."

Friends and fellow Conservatives reserved a dining room in London's Savoy Hotel for a golden jubilee dinner. Guest of honor: Winston Churchill, who was first elected to Parliament on Oct. 1, 1900.

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