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Show rw "'1 WHO'S NEWS THIS WEEK By LEMUEL F. PARTON NEW YORK. Rudolf Friml, maker mak-er of melodies for 25 years, finally final-ly gives credit to his collaborators. With the ouijl board, he's always talking shop Noted Composer with g r e a t Credits Ethereal composers, - 11 w . and every Collaborators once ,n a while they help him round out a score. He never knew why the "Song of the Vagabonds" just sang Itself through in five minutes, faster than he could score it, until he learned that he had an ethereal spokesman, or spooksman. His career, from the start on down to his present fifty-ninth year, is a testimonial to occult guidance, in planting him always al-ways in the highway of Lady Luck. In Prague, his birthplace, his father worked in a bakery. One day, his mother gave his father money to buy wood. Fates or phantoms guided him instead to a pawn shop, where he made a down payment on a tiny piano. Rudolf's mother was so angry she wanted to chop it to pieces, but the boy persuaded her to let him keep it. One day the owner of the bakery passed by, heard the lad playing beautifully beau-tifully and helped groove him into his musical career. At the age of 10, he had published pub-lished a barcarolle. In the musical conservatory of Prague, where he studied under Antonin Dvorak, he teamed up with Jan Kubelik. They were playing at a concert which Daniel Frohman happened opportunely oppor-tunely to attend. He took them to the United States for a tour of 80 cities. Whether or not Mr. Friml was just an amanuensis for spirits, his compositions com-positions streamed along rapidly "Glorianna," "The Firefly," "Ka-tinka," "Ka-tinka," "High Jinks," "Music Hath Charms," "The Vagabond King," and a whole album of others, none of them seeming to be of ghostly inspiration. Hollywood still keeps him busy and successful. H GORDON SELFRIDGE, the Anglo - American merchant prince, visiting this country, makes it a tossup between communism u e it -j and ruinous H. G. Self ridge t a x a t i 0 n. Sees Passing of Queried about Success Idyll communism overrunning Europe after the war, he asks, "What of it? What is the difference between communism and a society where a tax takes half of the income and a surtax the other half?" He says the day of initiative and enterprise is past. He is an authority on that subject. Sixty-two years ago, he swept out a store in Ripon, Wis. Two years later, he was an errand boy for Marshall Field Se Co. in Chicago, and a partner when he quit, in 1904. Punch ribbed him mercilessly when he opened his store in London, and the smart salons were full of clever mots about the American invader. invad-er. He made them like him. He hired as head of his dress department de-partment Lady Afflick, who had thought up the cleverest jokes abont him. Here in 1937, he was optimistic about Europe and the world in general. gen-eral. Now he says, "The opportunity opportu-nity to achieve and to show results has been eliminated all over the world." A LBERT SARRAUT, French min- ister of interior, swings on the French Reds with a spiked club. He links them with the Germans and , 1, . e promises to Albert Sarraut sweep Tough One Day, from all "vil- Pacific the Next laf ts' muntici-palities, muntici-palities, cities and towns." And he means to do just that. M. Sarraut, as governor-general of French Indo-China, was regarded as a hard-fisted and implacable colonial administrator. Returning to his country villa in France, he read Tolstoy, and renounced all belief in force. When he became minister of interior, his enemies, catching him thus off guard, swarmed all over aim. He resigned from the ministry minis-try and said: "I find now that I have no desire de-sire to smite hip and thigh those who do not think as I do. You gentlemen take over the job and see what you can do with it." He again became minister of the interior, but offered his resignation when King Alexander was assassinated assassi-nated in Marseilles. But, taking the premiership, he again swung his war club, hotly denouncing obstructionists obstruc-tionists and meddlers. Alternately tough and conciliatory, he is a veteran vet-eran of the rough-and-tumble ol French politics. A vacation, in his garden, where he is given to reading read-ing and meditating, is apt to bring on the Tolstoyan mood. (Consolidated Features WNU Service.) |