To Have & Have Not

Gertrude Niesen's $2,000,000 marble palace in Newport (bought for the torch-singer by Mama Niesen for $20,000) was visited by a man from the water department when the meter had run up a $600 bill. He walked in on a 50-room skating rink, on floors buried under half a foot of ice, to see the grand staircase a magnificent frozen waterfall. The pipes had frozen and burst.

Father Divine's angels, 80 of them, bought an eleven-story seaside hotel near Atlantic City, planned to use its 250 rooms (with 250 baths) as a haven for war refugees of all shades, providing the refugees stayed away from liquor, tobacco, bad words and gambling. Purchase price: $75,000 cash. Two days after the news was published, wealthy white neighbors began to talk of buying it back for $85,000.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's books were stored in underground vaults under his home--usable for blackout reading if Grandson Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana decides it is necessary to use the vaults as an air-raid shelter.

Sir Charles Vyner Brooke, Britain's wealthy White Raja of Jap-invaded Sarawak, turned up in Sydney with all the chattels he had managed to save: a toothbrush and shaving kit in a cloth bag.

Pathetiques

Sally Rand, who has not been in the news as often as she used to be, dropped her famed bubble dance from her repertory, explained to the press about the rubber shortage: she had only 21 rubber bubbles left.

"Jinx" Falkenburg, who was a leader in the 1941 publicity race for the Manhattan glamor stakes and then returned to Hollywood, asked a Los Angeles judge to shorten her name to plain Jinx. She said she figured that having the new name in electric lights instead of the old one would save the nation enough power to produce 26,000 lb. of aluminum. The judge reserved his decision.

Connie Boswell, of the once-famed Boswell Sisters, changed her first name to Connee. She was tired of dotting the i.

Tommy Manville said he was about to take his sixth wife. This was not the sixth wife he said he was going to take in February. One Manhattan newspaper said that he said the wedding would be on April 9, his birthday. Another paper said that he said April Fool's Day.

Lana Turner won a smashing victory at Minterfield, Calif. The personnel of the Army Air Corps voted her their "Delight in a Blackout" girl.

Bridgeport, Conn., the home town of Phineas T. Barnum, is laying down some fine new streets. They cut through the circus lots and leave no space for tents.

Ezio's Intermezzo

Ezio Pinza, dashing basso of the Metropolitan Opera for 15 years, sat on Ellis Island while a substitute Mephistopheles sang at the winter season's last matinee. Italian-born Basso Pinza, who had eleven touring dates, also had one with an examining board: he was in the hands of the FBI as a potentially dangerous enemy alien. His second wife, American Doris Leak Pinza, and his mother-in-law described him as an enthusiastic, 100% American. "He never even met Mussolini," declared his wife. Fretted her mother: "I hope they don't hurt his feelings. He is very shy and easily hurt."

A new ballroom dance was introduced at a dancing masters' convention in Rochester, N.Y.: the MacArthur Glide.

Fever Chart

Alexander Humphreys Woollcott: improving at a Syracuse (N.Y.) hospital after a bad time with his heart.

Bette Davis: up & around after a siege of ptomaine poisoning.

Edward R. Stettinius Jr.: admitted to a hospital in Charlottesville, Va., for treatment of a kidney ailment.

At the White House

When Franklin D. Roosevelt got a hankering for a mess of New York smelts, word was flashed to Governor Herbert H. Lehman, who shot the news to the State Conservation Department, which hurried it to a fisherman. Result: the mess was on the way to the White House within an hour.

John G. Winant, acting as delivery boy for British Minister of Information Brendan Bracken, brought in another ship model--a tiny one of the Mayflower, made from the wood of an English barn believed to have been built from the Mayflower's timbers.

To make way for a street extension, Eleanor Roosevelt faced the loss of the White House greenhouse, planned to buy flowers for the Presidential mansion, get along with only half as many after this. She columned: "We must look upon it as one of the things we have to give up, because it is out of the question to rebuild . . . at this time."

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