HP-Time

Worldly Goods

Wealthy Sculptress Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney decided to tear down the Harry Payne Whitney house-one of the last great mansions left on Manhattan's upper Fifth Avenue. Her husband willed it to her at his death in 1930 but she rarely lived there. A limestone and marble pile with ceilings imported from Italian palaces, a ballroom 63 ft. long and 45 ft. high, it was decorated by the late, famed Stanford White. All its furnishings and every fixture that can be detached will be aucioned off April 29 and 30. Among the furnishings: paintings by Gainsborough and Van Dyck, 35 tapestries.

Father Divine's angels, who last month bought the eleven-story, 250-room Brigantine Hotel near Atlantic City for $75,000, countered their neighbors' offer to buy it back for $85,000 with an offer to sell it for $500,000. The angels' spokesman wrote that "not any of the owners desire to sell for any price whatsoever, but would be willing to do what would be pleasing and justifiable in the sight of God and man," added "we all agree unanimously [the price] is not extortious."

More of the Rothschild's property in France was confiscated by Vichy-this time three great wine-producing estates, including famed Chateau Lafitte (rare Bordeaux).

Past Masters

Picture-making in Hollywood, overworked Babe Ruth fell victim to pneumonia, was hospitalized in a dangerous condition. Soon the husky Babe recovered sufficiently to sit up, receive visitors, hand down a prediction that the New York Yankees and Pittsburgh Pirates would win this year's baseball pennants.

Perennial, hay-whiskered, quid-chompin William Henry ("Alfalfa Bill") Murray, 72, onetime (1932-35) Governor of Oklahoma, announced himself a candidate for Senator, said he would make two or three speeches a day "if I receive donations for campaign expenses sufficient to hire a driver to carry me from place to place."

High-climbing Alvin ("Shipwreck") Kelly, No. 1 flagpole-sitter of the Daffy Decade, went to a hospital in Englewood, N.J., with injuries suffered in a fall of ten feet from a flagpole at Palisades Amusement Park.

New Bottles

Famed for his platform manner, shining-domed James Aloysius Farley took it into a radio skit, rehearsed for a part in a sketch concerning an ambitious lawyer's fight against a political boss. Farley's part: the ambitious lawyer.

Moderately famed for his souffles, Actor Alfred Lunt turned cooking instructor, took on a class of 50 beginners for a three-week course in everything from soft-boiled eggs to risotto. The $10 tuitions go to the American Theater Wing's war work. Among his pupils: wife Lynn Fontanne, Mrs. Lawrence Tibbett, Peggy Wood, Elsa Maxwell, Mrs. Brock Pemberton.

Wendell Willkie was elected chairman of the board of 20th Century-Fox, but said he had no intention of moving to California, was still simply the firm's attorney. He fills without salary the $130,000-a-year job resigned by Joseph M. Schenck after his conviction last year for income tax fraud, because Schenck was "in temporary difficulties."

Skis and Chinese are a rare photographic combination. At Sun Valley, Idaho two members of an illustious family produced it--Pearl and Tsi Suon, grandchildren of the late great Dr. Sun Yatsen, grandniece and grandnephew of Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek.

Uniformity

Colonel Hubert Fauntleroy Julian, the Black Eagle of Harlem who once challenged Hermann Goring to an air duel, once cracked up Haile Selassie's plane at the royal feet, enlisted in the U.S. Army as a private. "My blood tests," he reported to the press, "came back perfect, negative, and excellent."

President Roosevelt's bodyguard of the past five years, Thomas J. Qualters, 37, volunteered for the Army Air Corps, got the rank of captain and was assigned to Intelligence. He leaves his post as bodyguard to go on active duty May 1. "I was too young for the last war," he explained to his boss, "and I wouldn't like to pass this one up."

Apparently recovered from a long illness that had forced him out of action with the British, 52-year-old Colonel Kermit Roosevelt, son of the late "Teddy," left Los Angeles for San Francisco to see about getting into the U.S. Army.

Tyrone Power applied for enlistment in the Naval Reserve, passed his physical exam. The Navy said he would probably be made a chief petty officer assigned to morale and recreation. He gets a few months' grace to finish his picturemaking.

Phone calls to Cinemactress Rita Hayworth's house since suit for her divorce from Oilman Edward C. Judson (TIME, March 9) were reported to have rocketed so high that she finally had to have the telephone taken out.

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