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Show WHO'S NEWS THIS WEEK By LEMUEL F. PARTON x jew YORK. There is an Anthony Edenish flavor about the way Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles denounces Germany in the absence of Our Wellea No Secretary Hull, Flop in Poll of and there is an . n Edenish flavor Best Dresser about our Mr Welles himself. He is tall He is lean. He has a wee, precise mustache, and why nobody has picked him in a best-dressed poll is a mystery. His long, big nose is perfectly cut, too, and not a hair is out of place In the thinning pompadour that roaches back from a domed forehead. This Is not, however, to hint that the undersecretary Is anything any-thing less than 100 per cent American. He was born In New lork City 46 years or so ago. President Roosevelt's own Gro-ton Gro-ton and Harvard shaped him, and he Is at home In four or five clubs that Insist on looking up candidates In the Doomsday book of the Revolution of '76. His church, naturally, Is the Eplscpa! church, and his home now Is understandably In historic histor-ic Maryland,' where two sons are no doubt also preparing for Groton. ' The diplomatic gauntlet that he ran to reach his present post extends ex-tends back to 1915 and Tokyo. Betimes Be-times he has been much in South America. He has been first assistant assist-ant since 1937 to Secretary HulL ONE of Carl Sandburg's songs runs: "I have led a quiet youth, careful of my morals; I shall have an old age full of vice and quarrels." Youth in Peace So It goes with And Quiet; Now Walter Bren- In Rum and Riot na": t. a distinguished film career playing likable old reprobates. rep-robates. Hollywood pegs him as the successor to Will Rogers, and four Rogers pictures are being readied for him. He is a personable young man , of 40, but, in "Barbary Coast," "Kentucky," and such earlier films as "Smilin' Guns" and "The Lariat Kid," be came through handsomely as a tough old-timer, and now that's his ticket. He likes it, and, living these roles, becomes a sage, homespun old codger given to offhand, David Harum aphorisms. apho-risms. I have heard of similar occupational trends in Hollywood. Holly-wood. He says he is growing old happily. He first upped himself as an oldster old-ster by lying about his age to get in the war. Gassed in France, he lost all his teeth and got a rasp in his voice, which also helped. He raised pineapples in Guatemala, made money, lost it in Los Angeles real estate, and then crashed the films. Born and reared in Swamp-scott, Swamp-scott, Mass., he is a master of the quaint western and southwestern idiom. V X'HEN this writer was doing a vv short turn helping build the Panama canal, he fell in with a Jamaica Negro water boy, a sort of v i t i u GunSa Din of a t.J. Taylor Has squad of Parai-Jamaica Parai-Jamaica Boy's so swampers. Idea of Canal who was worried wor-ried about the canal being too narrow. In the quaint lingo of the British-taught island Negroes, he used to say: "Yes bahs, ships grow hugely in coming years and if some is fighting ship it must go swiftly and not fear other passing great ship. Axing parding sir, we Jamaica boys say canal need great enlarging." Frank J. Taylor, president of the American Merchant marine, returns from the canal to New York with the same idea. He says congress should spend $300,000,000 to widen the canal for both commercial and national defense reasons. Mr. Taylor's Tay-lor's career is Brooklyn's favorite "boy who made good" story from $1 a day to $35,000 a year, which is the possibly vulgar epitome of such careers in this day and age. He was an orphan lad in a Manhattan slum, at work at 12 as an apprentice at Robbins dry dock in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. He rose in politics, in the state assembly for 12 terms, sheriff, commissioner of records, welfare commissioner and comptroller of New York City. Retiring from the last office in 1937. he went to Florida, but the steamship owners tracked him down and burdened him with this $35,000 job. He fights government intrusion on private enterprise, but says the shipping interests will co-operate effectively ef-fectively with the United States maritime commission. Consolidated New Features WNU Service. |