People, Nov. 1, 1954

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Even the most prosperous poets, said prosperous Poet Ogden (Hard Lines) Nash, sometimes like to "make a little dough" on a sideline. Nash's sideline: guest expert on television panels. Said he: "TV is the biggest racket ever invented. I love it. Half an hour's fun a week—and they pay you for it ... Most of the mail I get is from eleven-year-old children who say 'I loved your book, David Copperfield, please send me your picture.' "

A whole generation of Americans grew up believing that John D. Rockefeller was walking proof that it is better to be healthy than wealthy—and that all the money in the world won't ward off sickness. But when the BBC revived the old legend that the millionaire's stomach was so weak he had to live on milk and crackers, John D. Rockefeller Jr., no Milquetoast, rose up to deny the story. In a letter to the British publication, the Listener, John D. Jr. wrote: "The story .. . about my father's living simply on milk was entirely fictitious . . . Drinking milk was not any more of a habit with him than eating bread or meat . . . Milk was to him just another food ... As to [a] statement with reference to my father's being willing to exchange his wealth for a sound stomach, I can state unequivocally that with only such occasional indispositions as everyone has, my father enjoyed good health throughout life."

In Milwaukee, War Correspondent Don Dixon of the International News Service, testifying before Representative Charles Kersten's Special Committee on Communist Aggression, described how he kept his sanity during 18 months as a Communist prisoner in Canton, China: "I found my strength thinking about my family and my country. I didn't want to do anything that would make them ashamed of me or that would give the Communists any satisfaction. I wanted, in my own small way, to defy them, to show them that even though they had the guns, that was all they did have. I kept telling myself I could take as much as they could give out without breaking. Of course I knew that everybody has a breaking point, but fortunately we got out before I reached mine." When he realized that the Communists might be trying to frame him as a spy, Dixon's imagination went to work: "I fed them the line that I spent nearly as much time in Korea covering G.I. baking and beauty contests as on the war, and that if I was a spy at all, it must have been for the Miss Universe contest."

Ever since financial difficulties abruptly halted the shooting of the Italo-American film William Tell last year, unpaid actors and technicians in Rome have been slinging verbal arrows at Co-Producer Errol Flynn. Last week, as if he were still portraying a swashbuckling hero, Flynn flew bravely back to Rome to face his critics. Suing an Italian company for the money he invested in the unfinished movie, Flynn declared: "I lived up to my contractual obligations. It's a case of guilt by association. I put up 300,000 bucks and I lost it. For me, this is a lot of money."