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Show RBI I : U I ' ni Newspaper Man Stuff: Down at the White House one of the staffers showed the President a mid-west paper's editorial attack. "I want to show you how low some people can get," said the White Houser. "Oh." replied FDR brushing It , aside, "those editorials aren't worth the paper they're written FOR." H. R. Knickerbocker'! bride returned re-turned by boat the other day from , London . . . Two passengers were frightful bores, she was telling John Gunther, so she confided that before getting on the ship a fortune teller told her: "You'll never live to see your 30th birthday!" "Ha!" said one of the bores. "That's a good one." "What's good about It?" groaned Mrs. Knickerbocker. "My 30th birthday birth-day is two days hence!" . . . The trick worked, all right . . . The bores stayed away for two days, but so did everyone! Including all the submarines. Several Broadway character were being discussed when in walked a ! columnist. i "I wonder," someone wondered, 'Vhat his hobby is?" "Collecting," retorted another, "dirty looks." One of the New York gazettes sent a photographer down to Chinatown the other morning. The assignment: Get picture of a Chinese reading those Chinese bulletin-board newspapers newspa-pers about the Allied victories, etc. . . . The news photoggcr bad no difficulty finding a willing Oriental who refused, however, to pose full-face. full-face. "Take a picture from back, please," he said, i "Why?" asked the lens-lad. "Bashful?" "Bash-ful?" "Nup," was the reply. "But this isn't a Chinese newspaper. It's a sign saying 'Get Your Clothes at Barneys' 1" Kipllnger's "Washington Is Like That" is still among the best-sellers ... Its most engrossing chapter, we think, concerns the FBI . . . The thoroughness of the bureau is almost incredible. In the Mattson kidnaping kidnap-ing case, 24,000 possible suspects v were examined! Of the 211 kidnap ing cases which were handled before it ceased to be a criminal Industry, only two remain to be solved and the G-men are still working on them . . , Only one perfect crime was ever reported to the FBI. Not much may be said of it, for the man and woman who did the killing are influential members of their community commu-nity and would inevitably demand huge damages if their identity were hinted at . . . The bureau knows when the murder was committed and where and how. But the body was never found, and the evidence was not the kind that a court would listen to. But, even now the FBI agents have been "getting" up in the morning with them, and "putting" "put-ting" them to bed at night for seven sev-en years! It's always interesting to trace the origin of words. Maj. Paul Raborg reveals in "Mechanized Might" (Whittlesey) how the war tank got its name. The British built the first tanks during the last war in complete com-plete secrecy. Even the workmen who built them didn't know' for what purpose they were being made. They were told the machines were to be used in Egypt for transporting large containers of water, and every record rec-ord in connection with their manufacture manu-facture was made under the heading "water-carrier." Eventually the men in the factories adopted the word "tank" for brevity. The name stuck and is now used by practically all countries. F. Oechsner's arresting "This Is the Enemy" has this nifty . . . Goebbels' Romeoing is so brazen, Germans whisper that if he ever wanted to hide, he could never be found ii he slept in his own bed! It's been Eddie Davis (the cab driver-author) ambition to write a play for Bob Hope. He got that way one night 8 years ago when he shot gags at Hope while driving the comedian home in his cab. Hope, he says, gave the gags back to him with a push. Last year Davis collaborated col-laborated with E. A. Ellington on a movie script designed for Hope. He sold it outright to Paramount Paramount Para-mount produced it with Hope, Crosby Cros-by and Lamour; in fact, it's called "Road to Morocco." The title is Eddie's, too. But he had sold it outright, and the screen credits only Frank Butler and Don Hartman as authors. So until Hop reads it here, he won't know that "Road to Morocco" is Eddie Davis' way of "showing him!" Notes of a New Yorker: Washington's Louise Atwill, who is the ex-wife of Gen. MacArthur, was being driven home from party the other night by a Senator . . . "Have you ever been sorry," he asked, "that you are no longer a great General's wife?" "No, Senator," she said, "I kaven't." "But," he butted, "you'd now be making history!" "Who made history with Napoleon," Napo-leon," she reminded him, "Marie Louise or Josephine?" |