People: People, Sep. 15, 1947

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Baptist Minister John Franklyn Norris, of Detroit and Fort Worth, who once attracted wide attention, even in secular circles, by shooting to death an unarmed political enemy (he pleaded self-defense, won an acquittal), turned up at the Vatican. Norris read Pius XII a statement deploring Baptist protests against the friendly exchange of letters between the White House and the Vatican, later reported to the press a jolly conversation. He told the Pope, said he, that U.S. Baptists were really afraid the Pope might make a Roman Catholic out of Baptist Harry S. Truman. The Pope, said Norris, threw up his hands and laughed.

Quiet Zone

Hospitalized: Cinema Czar Eric A. Johnston, 50; for inflammation in the elbow joint; in Washington.

Sliced about the face: Roddy McDowall, 18, gangly cinemactor; in a head-on highway collision, near Santa Monica Beach.

Still trotting for his health: Ambassador Jefferson Caffery, 60; around the garden of his place in Paris. Caffery, rain or shine, was doing exactly 51½ laps a day, dutifully carrying lead-weighted batons. Style note: he wore l.a.k.* shorts.

The Young Idea

In Manhattan, the late Wendell Willkie's 27-year-old son Philip had to talk like a politician while still studying law. He declared to the press that the reports from Indiana were absolutely not true—he was not a candidate for Congress. But he expressed "deep appreciation ... for the confidence . . . expressed in me."

In Southampton, L. I., Henry Ford II merrily turned 30 at the Meadow Club, with the assistance of home-town dinner-dance guests imported from Detroit by the planeload.

At Lake Success, L. I., Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. & Wife Ethel du Pont (both in absentia) got firm tuts from a police court judge. In July they had been charged with racing each other in their cars; in August, they had got their cases postponed, twice. Now they failed to come to court. Declared the judge after a half-hour wait: if they didn't turn up next fortnight, he would really have to send a cop.

The Common Touch

The plump Empress Dowager Sadako of Japan, who used to be known as "the Mother of God," became a working woman of a sort. Her job, the first of her life: president of the Japan Silk Thread Association.

Son Hirohito and his Empress Nagako got snapped prematurely as the Empress patted her husband's hair back for the photographer. Result: the least divine (and most ecstatic) picture of him so far.

Norway's Crown Prince Olav and Crown Princess Martha flew into the U.S. for a visit and a little exploratory tinkering, at a Boston hospital, with the Crown Princess' troublesome back.

Carol of Rumania and his red-haired Madga Lupescu, who went through a provisional marriage ceremony last July when Magda appeared to be dying, decided to make it good & legal this week or maybe next. In Rio de Janeiro there would be a sort of Double Carrick B. knot: the first twist civil, the second Greek Orthodox.

Princess Elizabeth, whose country house burned and who would have no trousseau, had nice news for a change. Nanking sent a Foreign Office man into Kiangsi province to watch over the production of a good Chinese porcelain service for her.