Past Masters

Almost 50 years after he graduated from Oxford University with 3rd class (not-so-scholarly) honors, three years after he was knighted, Oxford bestowed on famed, dumpling-shaped Satirist Sir Max Beerbohm an honorary Litt.D.

Round, bald Catalan Pablo Casals, world's top cellist, outspoken anti-Nazi champion of the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War, was reported arrested in southern France, turned over to Franco's authorities.

From one of the famously steely-blue eyes of oldtime Cinecowboy William S. Hart was cut a growth that had made him half blind. The eye operation, second on the 70-year-old veteran within a year, was pronounced "highly successful."

James Watson Gerard, 75, U.S. Ambassador to Germany in World War I, was knocked down in Manhattan by a bakery truck, sent to bed with a scalp wound and shock.

Smashed and turned over to the war scrap collection in West Orange, N.J.: a brass and bronze horn built by Inventor Thomas Alva Edison in the mid-'20s to make phonograph recordings. Weight: five tons; length: 125 feet.

Grinning his deathless grin and fit enough to travel soon was Captain Edward Vernon Rickenbacker. Reviewing his 24 days on a raft, he recalled the "nearness of death." Said the indestructible Eddie: "I know I came within hearing distance of the Old Fellow this trip because his approach is always unmistakable. One hears beautiful, soft music, and everything is extremely pleasant--just as Heaven should be."

In Uniform

Canadian-born Actor Raymond ("Abe Lincoln") Massey, veteran of World War I, reported for duty in Ottawa, was given a majority, assigned to the adjutant general's office.

Bryan Untiedt, nationally famed schoolboy hero of 1931 (he cared for 14 schoolmates in a blizzard-bound Colorado bus, dined with President Hoover at the White House), joined the Navy in Denver as a carpenter's mate.

Cinemactor Henry Fonda, father of three, reported to the Navy in Los Angeles for duty as an apprentice seaman.

Oleg Cassini, Hollywood dress designer, ex-Count (Russian), new citizen(U.S.), husband of Cinemactress Gene Tierney, joined the Army as a private in Los Angeles.

Juniors:

Last heard from in Britain (post-Dieppe), Lieut. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. turned up on leave in Manhattan, dined at the expensive, exclusive Colony with wife Mary.

From duty off the coast of Africa came Navy Lieut. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., turning up in Manhattan's plush Stork Club with wife Ethel du Pont Roosevelt and Boatswain Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt.

Brigadier General Claire ("Flying Tiger") Chennault's 17-year-old son Robert Kenneth enlisted in the Navy in Jackson, Miss. He has three older brothers in the Air Corps, one in the Navy, one in a defense training school.

On duty in North Africa: with a reconnaissance unit, Lieut. Colonel Elliott Roosevelt; with a commando unit, Captain Randolph Churchill.

Lieut, (j.g.) Arnold Welles, 26-year-old son of Under Secretary of State Sumner, reached Rio de Janeiro to start work at the U.S. Embassy as a naval aide.

At West Point a newsphotographer got four formidably newsworthy names into one neat package by rounding up a quartet of young cadets, posing them trim and scrubbed before a map of Africa.

The boys, left to right: Lieut. General Mark W. Clark's son William, Lieut. General Dwight Eisenhower's son John, Major General George S. Patton Jr.'s son George III, Major General James H. Doolittle's son John.

From New Guinea came a nice pictorial contrast--a not-at-all trim & scrubbed-looking picture of a general having his neck clipped: General Hanford MacNider, veteran of the Marne (nine medals, eleven citations), ex-National Commander American Legion (1921-22), Commander of the Legion of Honor, ex-U.S. Minister to Canada, ex-Republican candidate for Presidential nomination (1940), perched on a rock.

Debits & Credits

Missing from the new Manhattan edition of the Social Register: Gloria Vanderbilt di Cicco, Harrison Tweed (ex-husband of Poetess "Michael Strange," still in the book), Private Jacob L. ("Jakie") Webb, playful great-great-grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. Still in: Diana Barrymore Blythe Fletcher (stepdaughter of Tweed) and Ensign Anthony A. Bliss, husband of Actress Jo Ann Sayers (My Sister Eileen) and ex-son-in-law of Publisher Marshall Field III.

Please Remit

Montana's ex-Congressman Jacob Thorkelson sued Columnist Walter Winchell for libel, figured he had been done $1,800,000 worth of damage by mention in a Winchell series on "Americans We Can Do Without."

Errol Flynn news-of-the-week: 1) Flynn's rape trial was set for Jan. 11; 2) FBI nabbed and turned over to his parents a 13-year-old California boy who allegedly wrote the harried actor a note ordering him to send $10,000 "if you value your life and career. . . ."

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