People: People, Oct. 7, 1946

Style & Beauty

Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney turned up at a chichi-choked benefit in Manhattan's Plaza Hotel wearing a ready-to-wear number, and copped first prize (a bottle of champagne) as the best-dressed woman of the evening. "Shall I take it off?" cried Mrs. Whitney—and did. But what came off was just an outer skirt. It turned out that you could also wear it as a hood or a cape. Financier Whitney said he was proud of her.

Mayor James Michael Curley of Boston created a little stir of his own in the world of couture. Confided the Mayor to a visitor: on his back was a splendid tattoo of a schooner in full sail. The word spread like wildfire. The press clamored for a look. Then the Mayor, who is still under sentence for using the mails to defraud, became unapproachable. Boston wondered.

George VI suffered a nasty little dig from the underworld. Style-conscious burglars broke into a London tailor shop where a suit of the King's hung, departed with four choices of their own, but the King's was not among them. The snooted suit: a dark blue lounge model ($119).

Victor Moore lowered his bubble-shaped person into a lovely marble tub, assumed a moderately rapt expression, and, clutching his cigar, gave the world a change from the usual bubble-bath picture (see cut). The secret of his basketball-sized bubbles he kept to himself.

Slings & Arrows

Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House of Representatives, prepared to call it a summer and crawl back to Washington from his Texas ranch. It was better this year than last, when he broke an arm trying to catch one of his cows. Now the lucky statesman was suffering only from bee stings—four on one foot, from a bee in his boot.

Hazel Forbes, who rose from Ziegfeld glorification on Broadway to toothpowder riches (Dr. Lyon's, inherited from her late second husband Paul Owen Richmond), lost her purse in a Hollywood nightclub. The purse's contents: a diamond-studded gold cigaret lighter, a diamond-studded gold cigaret holder, a diamond-studded gold compact, a diamond-studded gold lipstick-&-perfume set, a diamond-studded pillbox, a solid gold scratch pad and pencil, a diamond-&-gold coin purse, a diamond-studded gold money clip, $500 in cash, and 40 solid gold keys. But no tooth powder.

Screen Love

Cinemactor Franchot Tone's wife, Jean, publicly pondered a separation. Cozy quote from Jean, by great-hearted Gossipiste Louella Parsons: "It's jealousy. Jealousy is a disease. . . . I can't bear the thought of separating from Franchot, because I love him, but we can't go on. . . ."

Sarah Churchill, green-eyed, ginger-haired actress-daughter of Winston and ex-wife of Comedian Vic Oliver, was having a complicated love life before cameras in Italy. Engaged for two pictures, one British, one Italian, she fell to work on both, shuttled back and forth between her roles: 1) an American composer's wife, 2) a Sicilian baron's wife, in love with another guy. "Two films at once," cried haggard Sarah, running into a little syntaccident, "are almost too much as it is. Isn't it?"

Travelers