Milestones, Apr. 24, 1939

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Birthday. Charles Chaplin, cinemactor. Age: 50. Greetings: from 37 Russian cinema directors, who cabled Mr. Chaplin their appreciation especially of his films Modern Times and City Lights.

Engaged. Patricia Ziegfeld, 22, only daughter of Cinemactress Billie Burke and the late Florenz Ziegfeld; to William Stephenson,* 26, dance instructor; in Hollywood.

Sued for Divorce. Gladys Dubois Armstrong, Hollywood song writer; by Robert Armstrong, 42, cinema tough-guy; in Hollywood. Grounds: mental cruelty and his wife's insistence that they live in Mexico.

Sued for Divorce. Archie Pitt, London theatrical manager; by Gracie Fields (real name: Grace Stansfield), 41, world's highest paid show-woman (earnings: about $750,000 a year), who for over 20 years has been convulsing British audiences with her Lancashire-isms and gracelessness; in London. After a visit to Hollywood in 1937, Gracie remarked: "I like me own country better."

Divorced. Cinemactress Joan Crawford (real name: Lucille le Sueur), 33; from Cinemactor Franchot Tone, 34; at last, after the judge had refused to grant a "proxy" divorce, required Mrs. Tone's appearance "in person"; in Los Angeles.

Died. Willard Huntington Wright, 51, critic and (under the pseudonym of S. S. Van Dine) detectifictioneer (Philo Vance) ; of coronary thrombosis; in Manhattan (see p. 36).

Died. William Thomas Lopp, 74, longtime Alaska's Reindeer Superintendent and Chief of the Alaskan Division of the U. S. Bureau of Education; of cerebral thrombosis and meningitis; in Seattle. To the Eskimos Lopp was "Tom Gorrah" (Tom, the Good Man). Largely responsible for the importation of reindeer into Alaska (1892), he fought all his life for laws that would return the reindeer from commercial interests to the natives.

Died. Robert Goodwyn Rhett, 77, Southern lawyer and financier, onetime President of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce (1916-18); of uremic poisoning; in Charleston, S. C.

Death Revealed. Ludwig Fulda, 77, famed German dramatist, novelist, poet, translator; in Berlin last month. Before the World War Fulda lectured in the U. S. as an exponent of German culture. Recently Nazis forced him to change his name to Ludwig Israel Fulda. Because he was a Jew, the Aryan press did not even report his death.