The Literary Life

Rex Stout offered his own formula for beard cultivation on the first day of the great razor-blade shortage scare, to men who preferred to give up shaving. Prescribed bearded Author Stout: "Sulphate of ammonia, nitrate of soda, and beer. And plenty of beer."

The Washington Times-Herald reported that Democrats were trying to get Carl Sandburg to run against Michigan's Congressman Clare E. Hoffman in the next Congressional election.

Favorite for election as official No. 1 Manhattan Deb this year in the Stork Club's coming nonsense was Oona O'Neill, daughter of brooding anchorite Dramatist Eugene O'Neill.

Fire did $50,000 damage to the Forbes Library at Northampton, Mass., but failed to touch any of the many recorded utterances of the late "silent" Calvin Coolidge.

At the divorce trial in Chicago of Elizabeth Kirkpatrick (The Red Network) Dilling (playing to a packed gallery of 250 spectators) four fights broke out in the mob that couldn't get into the court room; bailiffs were unable to squeeze their way out to disperse the mob; Mrs. Dilling's 24-year-old son made a lunge at a spectator who had made a wisecrack; because the gallery kept guffawing, the judge finally cleared the court; Mrs. Dilling, trying to make a little anti-Semitic speech, got herself cited for contempt.

A plain citizen whose sister is a queen arrived in Washington on a little business trip, with no tantara at all. He was David Bowes-Lyon, representative of the British Ministry of Economic Warfare, brother of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.

Memory Book

Charles A. Levine, who became the first transatlantic air passenger when he flew to Germany with Clarence Chamberlin in 1927, was convicted in Los Angeles of conspiring to smuggle a German alien into the U.S. from Mexico.

Referred to by the New York Times as "late," Humorist Gelett Burgess, 76, sent a letter to the editor, protesting that he was "almost never late," on the contrary "noted for my promptness."

Bowing off stage in a Brooklyn theater, the films' onetime Spirit of Fatigue, Stepin Fetchit, bowed into the waiting arms of two warrant officers. He was booked under his right name, Lincoln Perry, on a paternity charge.

Cinemactor Lew (Dr. Kildare) Ayres, who scored his first screen hit in the anti-war All Quiet On the Western Front, was sent to an undisclosed camp in the West as a conscientious objector. Of the 33-year-old ex-husband of Ginger Rogers the chairman of his draft board said: "We finally came to the conclusion that his objections to Army service were sincere. That's about all there is to say about the matter."

That Place

Hedy Lamarr said she was going to marry for the third time, this time Actor George Montgomery.

Myrna Loy said she was going to divorce Producer Arthur Hornblow Jr., declared, according to tradition: "Arthur and I are still the best of friends. . . ."

Ida Lupino's doctor ordered her away from Hollywood and into the desert for a long rest.

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