People, May 8, 1939

A pack of women running after Cinemactor Spencer Tracy on a platform in London's Waterloo Station knocked Arturo Toscanini flat.

To the New York State Tax Department it was reported that the estate (once appraised at $1,757,572) of mysteriously murdered Gambler Arnold Rothstein is now insolvent. Added the tax report: "The assets of this estate were not marketable assets . . . but were peculiar, due to the odd business interests of the decedent."

Visiting a garden dedicated to the memory of George V, Queen Mary, the Queen Mother, genteelly prodded some ivy with her umbrella, vowed: "If I had a pair of secateurs [pruning shears], I would cut it off now. ... If I come next year and it's still there, I will clip it off." "Her Majesty," translated a lady-in-waiting, "doesn't like ivy."

Requested to explain cosmic rays in a five-minute speech at the New York World's Fair illumination ceremony, Physicist Albert Einstein objected strenuously that a whole volume would not be enough, finally made a stab at it in 700 words.

Sexpert Dr. Marie (Married Love) Stopes, 57, published a book of verse, Love Songs for Young Lovers, which impressed George Bernard Shaw ("You are a poet all right. It can't be helped") and Laureate John Masefield ("I hope you will write more poems like We Burn"). Of herself she said: "Like 'A. E.' and like Housman, I write poetry only when I am in a special state of excitation."

For her best-selling novel, The Yearling, plump Marjorie Kinnan Rowlings was awarded this year's Pulitzer Prize. Other winners: Playwright Robert Emmet Sherwood (his second), for Abe Lincoln in Illinois; Biographer Carl Van Doren, for Benjamin Franklin; Scripps-Howard Correspondent Thomas L Stokes, for exposing WPA in Kentucky politics.

Denmark's Crown Prince Frederik and Princess Ingrid (see p. 11) visited the Ford factory in Detroit, where the Princess admired a Mercury rolling down the assembly line. "It's yours," said Henry Fofti. "What color?" The Princess chose blue. Not to be outdone, General Motors' President William S. Knudsen gave the Princess a pair of synthetic silk stockings, the Prince a dark blue Cadillac.

Scrubbed whistle-clean, the tomb of Ulysses S. Grant was rededicated in Manhattan. Commented Joseph Hudnut of Harvard Architectural School in The New Republic: "This ponderous, huge monster has seized this unaffected and reticent man and holds him ... in an eternal pillory of pomp and pretense."