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Show 11 fIS Pan Tales of the Town: In Sardi's a wise guy was commenting com-menting upon the way in which a news weekly picture of some notables nota-bles looked dwarfed compared to Mrs. Roosevelt in their midst. - "That's nothing," said Merry Mac McMichael, "to the way she dwarfs some people who aren't even in the picture." When Queen Wilhelmina was in the United States during the war she made a tour of inspection at West Point. . . . The boys had been drilled for days, and every detail de-tail of protocol was carefully studied stud-ied except one. ... No one informed the band which number to play for Her Majesty's entrance, and the leader chose one of his favorite numbers without thinking of the occasion. oc-casion. ... So, as the signal was given for the Queen's entrance (with every soldier standing rigid-' rigid-' ly at attention), the band broke I into: "The Old Gray Mare, She I Ain't What She Used to Be." I A group of editors were discussing discuss-ing the pros and cons of the OPA. "The NAM is right," said one. "After all, they've got business experience ex-perience that money can't buy." "They've also got lobbies," snapped a cynic, "that money can." The Intelligentsia: The career of Booth Tarkington is a lesson to page-struck neophytes. In the first five years of his writing apprenticeship, apprentice-ship, the two-time Pulitzer Award winner earned the vast sum of $22.50. . . . Dorothy Thompson will also col'm for a weekly. . . . Louis Fisher, who autti'd "A Week with Gandhi," is flying to India to visit him. . . . There's a sizzling feud on between novelist James T. Far-rell Far-rell and book critic Sterling North. . . . Dr. Harold Urey, atom bomb scientist (one of the important ones), will betcha we have an atom bomb war in less than 5 years, if the powers don't agree soon. . . . Well, goom-bye-bye, all! S'been nize columning about you. The OPA situation summed up: It's a question of whether the prices ! will be held down or the people ! held up. The Funnies: Alex Woollcott and Heywood Broun walked out on a new flop one night. ... As he left i his row "A" pew, Alex bent over to pick up a flower that had fallen : from a bouquet on the stage. . . . : "Don't you know it is bad luck," I chided Broun, "to take flowers from a grave?" . . . Percy Ham-i Ham-i mond once critiqued of a big show failure: "It is the first time in the- atre history that an audience ever I suffered from stage-fright." I Author Somerset Maugham points out: "All is grist for a t writer's mill. I don't create from i the whole cloth either of reality or ' of fancy. I have in my literary kit items in the newspapers, stray i encounters in the street, stories I 1 hear, no matter where. Eventually t out they grind, either as a story or - a play." The way a columnist grinds it ev- - ery day not every year. The Story Tellers: Gene Fowler . told Irving Berlin: "You are one 1 of the very few immortals who is - still mortal!" 1 Quotation Marksmanship: O. ' Henry: Her dress fitted her with fidelity and discretion. . . . Beth ' Brown: Up in the skyscrapers old women were filling their buckets with footprints. . . . Phil Baker: A gal looking for a guy who could make her dough-dreams come true. . . . Anon: He sat at his typewriter tenderly diapering his brain child with neatly folded phrases. . . . Mark Twain: Man was made at the end of the week's work, when God was tired. . . . Anon: When a gir: winks it means one of two tilings. She has something in her eye oi she has somebody in it. . . . Ber Hecht: He ate like a man with stowaway under his vest. . . . Olivt Schreiner: We talk so much of in tellcct and knowledge but what an they? After all, the heart can't live on them. One would barter all one'! knowledge for one kiss and all one'! intellect for one tender touch jus one! The Times' 'Berlin newsboy, Ra; Daniell, reported that the German: live if hope that there will be a wa: betw. n America and Russia. The; believe that such a war will givi them an opportunity to revive Nazi ism. ... In short, when the Allie. knock each other it's only oppor tunity knocking for Nazis. Will Rogers went to a dinner bu ' didn't know it was a political al 1 fair. The speakers were unanimou in peddling bigotry and hatred o jj the foreign born. ... As Roger j rose to leave (in disgust) he hcnri himself announced as the ncx speaker who would give his view on the crying needs of (he nntior lingers turned and drawled: "Afle listening to those who preceded mc il I have come to the conclusion th:i I what this country needs is fres . blood and what I need is fres nir " With that he left. |