People, Dec. 25, 1939

• Share

Radio Comic Fred Allen, having hugely annoyed Philadelphia's Chamber of Commerce by wisecracking about the smallness of a Philadelphia hotel room he once put up in (TIME, Dec. 18), tried to make amends by explaining that times had changed; but that old room, said he, "was so small it had a digest phone book, the calendar on the wall showed only half a day, the ceiling was so low that if you ordered a three-decker sandwich, the waiter brought one deck at a time."

To Manhattan, to supervise her $200,-ooo suit against Disney Productions, Ltd. and RCA Manufacturing Co., went glucose-voiced Adriana Caselotti, who spoke as Snow White in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She charged breach of contract, said her voice had been used on phonograph records without her consent, that she had been paid a pittance of less than $1,000.

Settled out of court was a suit for $50,000 brought by a Putnam, Conn. State highway worker against young (21) Manhattan Socialite Audrey ("Giddy") Gray, niece of the Duchess of Marlborough. Last July Audrey Gray knocked his two sons off their bicycles, drove on without stopping. To Wilfred Martineau Jr., 14 (left arm amputated), went $17,500; to Gerard (fractured skull), $11,000.

Creaky-Greeky Raymond Duncan (expatriate Paris-dwelling brother of the late Isadora Duncan), who so admires Attic culture that he wears a homespun chlamys (tunic) and sandals in all weather and all company, announced to Paris' Left Bank that he gave not one Hellenic hoot for France's war, said he would carry on as usual his courses in antique cloth-weaving, basketmaking, and rhythmics.

Reginald ("Red") Rowland, 53-Year-old British cinema manager who claims to be the author of the dirty war ditty Mademoiselle from Armentieres (pronounced—for the purposes of the song—"armentaire"), told a newsreporter at his home in Sutton, Surrey, England: "I am trying to do a piece for the lads in this war. You know, though, they say it's only once in a lifetime that you do a masterpiece. But that wasn't a masterpiece, of course. The fact is, it was the utterest tripe, old boy, the utterest tripe."

From Lisbon, Portugal, World's Fairer Grover Whalen embarked for the U. S. after a three-month European tour to shore up his next year's show with foreign expositionists. Said Salesman Whalen: "My visit was satisfactory. I believe I can say all countries I visited will reopen their pavilions at the World's Fair, as well as Poland and Czecho-Slovakia."

Wrinkled, doggy, 74-year-old Townsend Scudder, retired New York State Supreme Court Justice, won a Connecticut State Supreme Court injunction allowing him to maintain 27 cocker spaniels on his Round Hill, Greenwich, Conn, estate. Thus ended a litigious two years in which neighbors, annoyed by barking, had sought to hold Judge Scudder down to a measly ten spaniels.