People: Thoughts & Afterthoughts

In Manhattan to plug a new movie (Trio) adapted from three of his short stories, Somerset Maugham told reporters that his writing career was almost, but not quite, over: "If I think of an occasional little piece I will write it. When you have written for a great many years, it's a habit you get into and rather hard to break, and if I don't sit at my writing table each morning, I don't know exactly what to do with myself."

Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, after two months of wild boar and gazelle hunting in Iran and the Himalayas,was back home with some wildflower seeds for his Wallowa mountain hideout in Oregon, and some traveler's impressions: "India is bristling with ideas, projects and programs. It reminds me very much of the first term under Roosevelt."

"The time to celebrate is when you're admitted to the family," said Irish-born Cinemactress Greer Garson (now Mrs. Elijah E. Fogelson) as she slipped into Fort Worth to apply for U.S. citizenship.

World Citizen Garry Davis, who renounced his citizenship in 1948 to plump for a world without boundaries, decided that he wanted to be a U.S. citizen after all. Back from Haiti where he had gone in protest against "American intervention in Korea," he penned a plea to the U.S. Attorney General asking if his U.S. birth and war record would be enough "to bypass the time usually required by an immigrant to become a citizen . . ."

The late Sherwood (Winesburg, Ohio) Anderson was a hard man to tap for a free book, according to the current Saturday Review of Literature. Answering the Chicago Historical Society's request for a copy of his novel Marching Men, Rebel Anderson wrote, in 1917: ". . . I am not a popular writer, at least the royalty checks from my publishers do not indicate that I am. My books are seriously discussed by our American deep-sea thinkers but they are not bought by the man in the street . . . Make the publishers give you one if you can. Don't tackle the defenseless writer . . . I'll be hanged before I'll give any institution a copy of a book I write."

With a sharp eye for a competitor's product, Cinemogul Darryl F. Zanuck, back from getting a new movie rolling in Germany, had a prediction: "I would say if the political and military situation remain the same, some of our strongest competition two years from now will come from the German film market."

In his Swiss chalet at New Paltz, N.Y., Oscar (Tschirky) of the Waldorf, semi-retired since 1943, ordered his 84th birthday dinner: boiled beef with boiled potatoes. Said he: "The average American still likes plain cooking."

Even the thought of ending segregation in publuc schools made Georgia's Governor Herman Talmadge hot under the galluses. Said he: "There are not enough troops or police in the U.S. to enfore such an order."

After her year-old son, Benjamin Briggs Goodrich, was christened in San Antonio's St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Cinemactress Olivia de Havilland (Mrs. Marcus Goodrich) announced that little Ben was to grow up to be a Supreme Court Justice "because justice is so important in the world."

Plus & Minus