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Show Tales of the Toicn: 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 rigidly rigid-ly at attention), the band broke into: "The Old Gray Mare, She Ain't What She Used to Be." 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 autk'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 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," chided Broun, "to take flowers from a grave?" . . . Percy Hammond Ham-mond once critiqued of a big show failure: "It is the first time in theatre the-atre history that an audience ever suffered from stage-fright." Author Somerset Mangham points out: "All 'is grist for a writer's mill. I don't create from the whole cloth either of reality or of fancy. I have in my literary kit items in the newspapers, stray-encounters stray-encounters in the street, stories I hear, no matter where. Eventually out they grind, either as a story or a play." The way a columnist grinds it every ev-ery day not every year. The Story Tellers: Gene Fowler told Irving Berlin: "You are one of the very few immortals who is still mortal!" 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 girl winks it means one of two things. She has something in her eye or she has somebody in it. . . . Ben Hecht: He ate like a man with a stowaway under his vest. . . . Olive Schreiner: We talk so much of intellect in-tellect and knowledge but what are they? After all, the heart can't live on them. One would barter all one's knowledge for one kiss and all one's intellect for one tender touch just one! The Times' Berlin newsboy, Ray Daniell, reported that the Germans live in hope that there will be a war betw. n America and Russia. They believe that such a war will give them an opportunity to revive Nazi-ism. Nazi-ism. ... In short, when the Allies knock each other it's only opportunity oppor-tunity knocking for Nazis. Will Rogers went to a dinner but didn't know it was a political affair. af-fair. The speakers were unanimous in peddling bigotry and hatred of the foreign born. ... As Rogers rose to leave (In disgust) he heard himself announced ai the next speaker who would give his riews on the crying needs of the nation. Rogers turned and drawled: "After listening to those who preceded me, I have come to the conclusion that what this country needs is fresh blood and what I need is fresh air " With that he left. |