People: People, Jun. 30, 1947

The Old Gang

Hamilton Fish, once a Congressman, said he was about to reappear as a magazine publisher; he proposed to counteract Henry Wallace's New Republic influence. Also, said Fish, he would soon have a book out—"one dollar on newsstands, just like Wendell Willkie's book, One World."

George H. Earle, who used to be Governor of Pennsylvania and a U.S. diplomat in the Balkans, survived what he said was his 15th plane crash. When the wheels of an amphibian wouldn't let down, the ship made a dry-land landing on pontoons at 70 m.p.h. Earle's injury: a scratch on the wrist.

Norman Thomas, five times a candidate for President of the U.S. on the Socialist ticket, said he wouldn't run any more. "Two or three times is all right," explained Thomas, "but after that it gets to be a gesture."

The Beautiful People

A hunter's stray bullet forced down Hollywood Hero Jon Hall's private plane, and Hall rose to the occasion. The bullet had just missed him, he told the breathless press. "You'd think the war was still on," he added.* With him, said Hall, was his blues-singing wife, Frances Langford. The publicity was wonderful. Next day it was not so wonderful. Pressed for details, Hall finally confessed that neither he nor his wife had been in the plane at the time. Said he: "I wish this would be forgotten. Too much fuss has been made. . . ."

Actress June Haver, who married a musician last March in Las Vegas and then married him again in Hollywood, said she would now divorce him. Alan Stephan, "Mr. America of 1946," married Grace Pomazal, "Miss Quick Freeze." Hedy Lamarr's estranged husband, Actor John Loder, who had been pricked in a dueling scene, had a sword-tip cut from his thigh. And Actor Chester Morris broke his leg in two places dancing at a children's party.

The Literary Life

Reactivated: H. L. Mencken, Baltimore's oldest volcano; by Columnist Earl Wilson, who interviewed him. The volcano showed its age; the new rumblings were as sensationally noisy as the outbursts of the '20s, but now they sounded a lot more hollow: "I'm in favor of war and hope it starts soon. . . . The country enjoys war. . . . [The Japanese] are the only intelligent Orientals. . . . There's not an honest man in China. That reminds me, no American Indian has ever been worth a jolly good God damn, either. . . . [On Harry Truman] That quack! ... [On Harold Stassen] Another quack ... A Republican Henry Wallace."

Also reactivated, with a difference: Sinclair Lewis, who made his first big noise lambasting all the herd-minded Americans who join lodges and wear funny hats at male get-togethers. A Yale class reunion brought Lewis running, obediently decked in the herd's badges and wearing the standard reunion headpiece (see cut).

Forfeited, by John Dewey: a share in his first wife's estate ($68,565 net). Papers filed in a Manhattan court showed that she left him a share provided that he stay single. She died in 1927. After 19 years, Philosopher Dewey, 87, remarried last winter.