Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 20 November 1951 — Page 17
1951 e Greeny
husband, .
[rs. Paul rt Ga y, all of randchil-
NY
“living in hotels.”
ro
In 1 Jo Indiapomotie
NEW YORK, Nov. 20—“Ya get the Statue of Liberty ferry on the other side of the park, Mac,” the driver of the. bulldozer said, absently, * “Ever. been to the Statue?” From his curt answer, I assumed the man sees enough of the famous lady with the torch. The trip to Bedloe Island from Battery Landing is for tourists, Mac, The short exchange of words amused me. I thought about all the folks in Indianapolis who haven't visited the Soldiers and Sailors’ Monument. The Monument is for tourists, for New Yorkers. It takes an hour and 45 minutes top make the trip. That's a -lot of time for busy people and everyone is busy here. At least they give that impression, > > ob
THE FERRY. didn't take a full 13ad of pas: -
sengers. There were about 20 school children, 10 youthful couples, three or four older couples, a young man with a camera.and photographic carrying case and a Hooster who was, he doesn't mind saying, quite thrilled. There are a lot.of reasons for this. Long before I knew or cared much about the world that existed beyond the shores of Wolf Lake, Heini®s pasture, the railroad trestle near the glue factory, I heard about the Statue of Liberty. It takes an immigrant to tell you what the sight of the symbol of freedom means. > * < I THOUGHT of some of the things my folks and the neighbors used to talk about. And how they used to laugh at themselves. I could see my father with a big card pinned on his chest boking the big lady over, back turned forever on Europe. The picture of my mother, shawl over her. head, tag on the front of her coat, feather hed and belongings in her arms, became clear. She can stinl make a funny story out of the Ellis Island landing) Last summer it was my privilege to experience the powerful emotion of saying farewell to Miss Liberty. A Chicago school teacher, who had saved her money for years to make the trip to Europe, stood next to me with tears in her eyes as we watched the Statue grow smaller and smaller and finally disappear, > <> ° THE THRILL of seeing the Statue of Liberty on your return to America can be compared to what is in your heart on a joyous Christmas morning. Life isn’t perfect but it's so close to being perfect nothing matters.
It Happe By Earl Wilson
NEW YORK, Nov. 20—The James Masons had a weary and discouraged look--and needed some tea.
They'd returned empty-handed from trying to buy a wedding present for Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra. “You're a man of the world --what YOU buy them?” Mason asked me. He across the living room of his hotel suite. “Is it really that hard?’ I said. “The trouble is, Frankie and Ava have had everything in the world given to them, Mason, or Pomela, answered, serving tea. “Here's a couple that's going to do a lot of Mason said. “You can hardly buy them furniture.” : “That's right,” Mrs. Mason said. “A decorator would sort of take care of ail of that for them “And all the personalized things have already been given to them. too.” She handed her husband a large, tempting piece of pastry which he
would looked
both Mrs,
rejected as being too fattening. + & » “WHERE all did you go on your search?” I asked. “We went “to Jensen's.” Mrs, Mason said,
referring to the expensive store in Fifth Ave. “We were thinking in terms of silver.” “Then we looked in at the jewelry department.” Mr. Mason reported. “We kept wondering what piece of jewelry can a married couple wear together? “Maybe some diamond or platinum handcuffs,” he thought. “After that,” Mrs. Mason said, “we visited the china department, and then we crept back here.” “And now I withdraw from it” Mr. Mason informed his wife, “I think you'd better take it over.” Mrs. Mason said, “You see, we had an experience with Ava that taught us she's not the type of girl you buy a clock for.” * % ®
MR. MASON was back in England at the time —in 1950 — making “Pandora and the Flying Dutchman” with Ava. That was the picture (just now being released! in which a poetry-writing bullfighter named Mario tried to woo Ava. Mario runs around in the picture shouting, “My mother was a Gypseee'” “He's the greatest actor since Johnny Weismuller,” Nunnally Johnson says.
Americana By Robert C. Ruark
NEW YORK. Nov, 20--It seems to me [ am sicker these days than 1 used to be, and it also seems that the sickness stems from the prevalseems that the sickness stems from the prevalence of pills. We have too many remedies for too common ordinary aches. Everybody I know takes pills. They take all the vitamins, green, pink, blue, vellow, red. They take pills to go to sleep. They take pills to get up from the slumber that has been induced by other pills. They take up-lifting pilis, and down-beat pills,.and by gosh the pillbox is more rife today than that snuffbox of yesterday.
For some obscure reason I got along for donkey's years on food alone. Didn't need the triple vitamin. Didn't need the complex-X to cure a hangover. Aspirin was taken for a really desperate head. Once in a while you demanded a brief touch of calomel, or a light slug of Lydia Pinkham's to clear up the complexion. But never the heavy dosage of pills, pills, pills, just for pills’ sake, + &- &
THE ARTIFICIALITY of living today is manifest in many a medium, but the pill thing tells me that we are really off on a reverse kick. You get to thinking that 8ir Francis Drake sank, or sunk, the Armada, and T will bet you double he never did it by benefit of capsule. D. Boone never needed a short methadrine to bang that bear out of the tree, and I expect that gold was discovered at Mister Sutter's place without artifical assistance. My sawbones says that I got all sorts of deficiencies. I got a loose liver, and a frammis on the overstraw, and for all thesa delicacies of heing I got to take pills. The pills cost a minimum of eight bucks per each, and they taste worse after you consume them than they did going down. To now they have not cleared up a chronic condition of bloodshot eye or an overwhelming sinus. Nobody yet has delivered in capsule form, a nostrum which will keep you from hating yourself in the morning. ; * ¢ <>
THE FEEBLE FRAME has been subjected, this year, to multiple assault from penicillin, aureomycin, streptomycin and all the other big antibiotics. There has been a combat In progress which has so weakened me that I figure to be a sucker for the next germ that ain't got no place to go except home to papa. The nearest thing to surgery that is performed today is a stab in the caboose with a hurried facsimile of what they give you in pill form, As a chronie invalid I appear to have heen sitting on a porcupine. Do I feel better? Nunh-huh, I feel worser and worser. although some might say that deponent is still alive. All the benefit I have collected from this year is over-activity, for in words a child can understand, I am just too sore to set,
/
pened Last Night
wis “Statue of Liberty Is For Tourists, Mac’
I rode the elevator. to the base of the Statue, The view from the balcony of the New York Harbor was worth the price of the trip. Everything
was so peaceful up there, Ideal atmosphere for -
viewing the New World which meant so much to millions of frightened and oppressed people. Walking up the 168 steps to the tiara of the Goddess of Libérty made the ticker race and the legs quiver. One look out of the windows made me forget all physical discomfort, for at that moment I was one of three Americans of the 150 million in our land standing in that unique landmark of liberty. I was proud and, if I had had a flag, 1 would have waved it. The guy in the bulldozer was missing a great deal. ow & ow THE NEW YORK skyline was hazy. 1 thought it ought to be crystal clear, sparkling. The front door of my house should not be smudgy. House . house . ., my hand reached into a pocket and out came the black notebook,
George Cushing, vice president of Radio Station WIR in Detroit, had a few words to say about "our house.” Mr. Cushing is one of those rare “all-Americans” you meet knocking around the country. “Our house is divided today . .. not just polit« ically . .. for a difference of political opinion is a normal phase of democracy. We expect that in America,” Mr. Cushing sald. oF A “WE ARE DIVIDED today by groups who would use this country for their own selfish ends. We have reached a period where some men place personial ambitions ahead of their country. We have lost something in America. . . . We can't blame that on the war, we can't blame it on the Democrats or on the Republicans, we can’t blame it on labor or management. We must blame ourselves, We've developed into a nation of many pressure groups, each one working tirelessly for their own selfish ends.” The black notebook went back into my pocket. I didn’t want to read any more. The feeling of shame for fellow Americans who don't put their country first in all things, had no place where I was standing. The Statue of Liberty is a symbol of the bright future. I want it to remain bright. A man has to have faith in something, in the fu-
ture, in his country, God, himself. Beautiful Lady, watch over us. It takes time to grow up.
Masons Can’t Find Sinatras a Gift
“Anyway.” Mrs. Mason said, “somebody had given Ava an elaborate German clock. We were very friendly with my ex-husband and his new wife then and as Ava was moving back and forth from England to Spain, we left the clock with Sue.” Sue, she explained, was the second wife of her firet husband, Roy Kellino. “Every so often Ava thought of asking for the clock and we told her it was in good hands. “Well. then Ava came hnme and the clock remained there. And by now Sue had divorced my ex-husband and married another man and we were no longer speaking to her,
& Bu
“BUT IN THE meantime what about poor Ava's clock? The last we heard was that Sue had opened a bric-a-prac shop and we hoped Ava's clock hadn't got in there!
“80 vou can see.” said Mrs. Mason, “why we realize how difficult it is to buy something for them.” “We're going to have dinner with them tonight,” Mrs. Mazon =aid. “I'm going to pump Ava a little." : They went to dinner all right. and Frankie
and Ava had a appeared that needed. But the next day the wedding was on again. And meanwhile the Masons' hotel suite was burglarized of $30,000 worth of jeweiry while they were out, and so they weren't in any mood to think of wedding presents. But Love Must: Go On-—and so Mr& Mason said. “We should give them a gold hope chest filled with gold.” “Only we can't afford all our jools.” Thus it went all week and there were signs that they might be giving the Sinatras a clock, anyway, because, as some authority once said, “There's no present like the time.” ¢ » 9 : ‘TODAY'S WORST PUN: Iran, says Freddie Martin, is the place where the girls dance sheik to sheik.
little lovers’ quarrel. And it no wedding presents would be
it now that we've lost
* 4 9
WISH I'D SAID THAT: Jersev Joe Walcott to restaurateur Gene Leone: “Boxing taught me to watch out for the rights of others.” , , , That's Earl, brother.
Shuns Costly Pills For Proven Remedy
The latest bulletin from the medicos is that all the wonder drugs are losing their punch. The microbes are getting longer and stronger, and are thumbing their little noses at the cure-alls. I know this to be true; I got germs today that would have slaughtered grandpa. 80 have all the other people that own a franchise on hypochendria. I just guess-that the pills and the injections have weakened them and encouraged the viruses. “ oo -
MAYBE IT is so that modern times have made a nation of sissies of us, and that the stress of
mere existence is getting us down. All I know is that everybody feels poorly, and everybody tells vou that he has found the most magnificent cure for what makes him ache,
Which leads me back to grandpa. Grandpa suffered from. a dreadful illness; he had a built-in hatred of work. Grandpa used to say that there was nothing under the sun that a solid jolt of corn whisky wouldn't cure or, at least, ameliorate. Grandpa Ifved to be nearly as old as the pyramids, and he never took a pill in his life,
T have decided. in the prevalence of pills. th go back to the ideals of my fathers. If ham-and-hominy, whisky and turnips-greens can't do it for me, I am to just lay down and die. But IT have taken my last pill. and you know something nice? Now I can find the razor and the toothbrush. which are things that got lost for years behind a forest of vitamins and preventatives that had grown in bottles.
Dishing the Dirt By Marguerite Smith
Q.—I have several African violet plants. They did well this summer but now they seem to be dying in the center of the plant. Mrs. Lena DuKate, 907 N. Keystorfe, Q.—My African violet plants are not doing well—the outer leaves are limp. Mrs. Lila Elliott, Mooresville. : A.—These are typical African violet queries coming to this column. So I have prepared a new leaflet for you African violet raisers. It takes up common African violet troubles. Mrs. Ernest Kitch, president of the Indianapolis African Violet
Society, very kindly gave her time to act as con- ————
Read Marguerite Smith's Garden Column in The Sunday Times
sultant and to suggest material to be included in this leaflet. It ia entirely different from the beginner's leaflet offered in this column previous ly. You may have this second leaflet free of charge if you will send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to Marguerite Smith, Dishing the Dirt, THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES, Indianapolis 9, Ind. Be sure to enclose your self-addressed stamped. envelope, "
»
Trouble and: Suez—
Canal Strife Started In 1869
ROUBLE and Suez are two words that have been linked since the time of the Pharaohs, ~ Down through the centuries, the idea of a connection across the Isthmus of Suez between the Mediterranean and Red Seas has captured the imagination of men. Since it came into being, in 1869, the Suez Canal has been a focal point of international strife, There was a grand opening on Nov, Europe's crowned heads attending. That night there was a festive ball at Port Said, and Emperor Franz-Josef of AustriaHungary sat smoking ‘rosescented tobacco from a hookah studded with diamonds.” The strains of a Viennese waltz soared through the starry night agross the desert to where the canal lay, narrow and muddy, but ready for business. 8 2 Fr IN ITS FIRST year, only 10 ships paid to pass through. In 1950. a record vear, 11.751 vessliced across the desert wastes in the historic canal. Most of these—64 per cent— were oil tankers, riding high in the water on the southward trip but full of oil and deep in the water going north. It took Ferdinand de Lesseps, the man who built the canal, 10 years and cost $150 million. It wasn't a difficult engineering feat, because the canal is really a channel dredged through sand. It is virtually straight,
sels
, 1869, with many of -
One-Man Opera—
‘The Indianapolis
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1951
OBJECT OF IT ALL—The prow of a British man- of war pushes through the placid waters of the Suez Canal—thin, precious lifeline of the shrinking British empire,
with only five gentle curves in itz 101 miles. The canal has always been a private enterprise. It is run by a company that is predominately French. It has never been owned by Great Britain, although Britain today owns 44 per cent of the stock. That came about when the Khedive of Egypt in 1875 had to sell his holdings to meet hiz personal debts: England's Disraeli was faz Sighted ehough
to buy them
Oscar Lohnars
By REMO MACCHINI
Times Special Writer
HICAGO, Nov.
20—Don’t ‘go near Oscar Lohner's apartment unless you like opera.
The guy is an
unofficial, unpaid, unstoppable salesman of grand opera Anybody who walks in the door gets a digested version of
an operat thrown at his, plete with costumes, scenery. Officially, Lohner gives his one-man performances in © living room every other eek. They attract quite an audience, because Re is the only one-man
commusic and
opera company in a 1l14-room apartment on Chicago's southride. Also, he is a very in-
formative and entertaining person.
Lohner is a big, jovial man of 50. ' During the day. he is an interpreter for an airline. At night, though, his other side comes out and he is an opera. Not just one ch \aracter; Lohner is a whole opera all by his big, Jovial self. One corner of his living room {s transformed. into a miniature stage, equipped with colored lights and curtains and a set. The set iz backed up by a big painting of the scene, and on
“where he changes
the stage Lohner places a few
props necessary to ‘the action. = = = THE AUDIENCE — friends and sometimes visiting dignitaries—are seated. and Lohner disappears into the bedroom into costume. He comes out in different clothes and a different mood. He is no longer Oscar, the host. He is now Lohner. the opera. He begins by describing the opera he is presenting. With vivid actions and insertions of humor and or despair. he teils the story act by act, scene by scene, aria’ by aria. Then he darts behind the curtain to start the phonograph. Long-playing records of the night's opera are ready. The overture begins, While the music plays and the recorded stars perform. Lohner acts out the part and translates the singing into English. He
Diogenes of the Mississippi—
Ben Burman: One Man Voice Of America
BY SUMNER P. AHLBUM
Times Special Writer
EW YORK, Nov.
20—Ben Luciep Burman is fast
becoming a one-man Voice of America in Western
Germany.
When he told about it the other day in his
hotel, Ben's almost perpetual smile expanded until he looked as if he'd just caught a prime string of catfish. like one of the rivermen he writes about in his stories of the Mississippi A somewhat small fellow in a crowd, but ‘no little man in the world of books, he is back in New York to see about his newest book “Children of Noah,” just published by Julian Messner. Inc And he is stil laughing his gentle Kentucky chuckle over the way he outshone the movie stars when he was in Berlin this summer during the film festival. ” » 4 THERE was a photograph of Ben, three feet high, in the lobby of the Am Zoo hotel on the Kurfurstendam, Berlin's Fifth Avenue, where he was staying. It go so he took to ducking around in back of the picture when: he went through the lobby; otherwise, he had to run a gauntlet of people wanting his "“autogram,” to talk
New York
about his book. or reaching out to help him with his coat. Berliners —and Western Ger: mans—had alreadv known Ben for a long time. One of his earlier American best:isellers, “Blow for Landing,” was an immense success when it was published in Germany in 1939, although he didn’t know about it then, Goebbels-banned the book as U. 8. propaganda in 1941. but when the war ended. ‘Blow for Landing was the first foreign book licensed for publication in occupied Germany. = = = IT HAS sold almost 100.000 copies—the equivalent of about half a million in this country. His “Everywhere I Roam.” published here in 1949, has been chosen by the largest German book club Hix new book “Children of - Noah.” will ap pear in a German edition next year, All this ig tangible evidence of why the Germans look upon Ben, who writes with the simple,’ poetic humor of the river
‘It' About the Same Old Stuff’ —
By VIRGINIA McPHERSON United Press Hollywood Correspondent HOLLY WOOD, Nov. 20 Blond Barbara Payton flounced out on Franchot Tone after a bitter quarrel late yesterday. She told friends she'll wind up their 53-day marriage by filing a divorce suit today. Her attorney, said, didn’t work. but she i= now contemplating legal action.” Barbara, ago- lost her movie contract, said she will charge her bridegroom of seven weeks with the
Robert Feder, | she is sorry the marriage |
who only 24 hours |
time-tested Hollywood excuse of |
“mental crueity”
‘On the other side of the fence, |
Mr. Tone's pals insisted he's the one who's going. to file.
“He's been conferring with nk
Tone’s Fling At
lawyer, Henry Hertzbrun, for some time about it.” one friend said. “I wouldn't be surprised if Barbara tried to file, but Franchot's going to jump the gun on her.” Even during their honeymoon days, the spokesman said, Mr, Tone has had a detective fol. lowing Barbara.
No Such Animal
WORCESTER, Mass., Nov. 20 (UP) — The Worcester County Safety Couns cil has abandoned its sixweek search for the area's most courteous automobile driver.
“There just doesn't seem to be any.” said Council President Howard Hindes,
BRITAIN'S ACTIVE partici-
pation in the affairs of the canal dates from 1882, when the British troops came in to
suppress the Arabi Pashi revolt.
Egypt was still nominally Turkish territory then. and remained so until 1914," even
though British troops were continually in occupation. From 1888 on, the canal has been technically open to ships
. of all nations in war and peace.
This has actually been violated several times.
During both wars, it was
as
closed to Germany and her allies—not by ruling, but by the equally formidable device of a tight blockade. Since the Palestine war, Egypt has defied the United Nations by refusing permission for Israel-bound ships to pass through. During World War I, the canal was seriously threatened. A German-inspired and Ger-man-directed attack by Turks ploughed across the Sinai Pen-
insula, with guns and pontoons lashed between camels. On Feb. 2, 1915, the
attackers
imes
PAGE 17
reached the canal's edge. In a two-day battle, they were turned back. LJ 8.08
AFTER MUSSOLINI invaded Ethiopia, in 1834, the Egyptians. were terrified that they were next on his conquest calendar. Their fear led to the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 ~the one Nahas. Pasha and Egypt just abrogated—which allowed England to station troops and planes there as “collaborators” with Egypt in the defense of the canal.
Egypt, incidentally, will auto- .
matically come into possession of the canal in 1968 without any
trouble. The original agreement between de Lesseps and Egypt, was for 99 years and then, upon payment of “due compensation.” the canal becomes Egyptian property. Hitler cast covetous eyes on the canal, and it was the prime object of Rommel's dash across the desert. He reached El Alamein, slightly more than 200 miles from Suez, before he was halted. The Suez Canal Zone, today, is a strange place. It is only a few hundred yards wide, but side by side along its 101 miles run the canal itself, a railroad, a well-surfaced highway, elec tric cables and a fresh-water canal. It 1s this strip of land that has become the vital link of Britain’s lifeline. And once more, Suez Canal is a scene of idternational tension.
Friends Must Like Music
OSCAR LOHNER as '
loves and laughs and sobs and, sometimes, drops dead. It is very authentic,
¥
BEN LUCIEN BURMAN —
"The universe of simple man."
and mountain folk, real voice of America His books, said the newspaper “Die Neue Zeitung.” have ‘not only an American but an international theme that reflects the universe of nan.”
as a
simple
Ben is willing that. What is reflected in all his writing is the little man against the vastness of nature. The river makes a good universal symbol of that vast-
to subscribe to
‘Rigoletto:
Loves, laughs and sobs.
Some of his audience come back for performance after performance. They have contrib-
ness, he feels, for the Mississippi is ‘a mighty awesome thing to the little men along its banks. and in the shantyboats, who people Ben's novels. = = = HE ALSO SEES gigantic propaganda power in novels —his or any others—because everywhere he roamed in Germany. he found people had been fed so much official propaganda they no longer believe fit. These were the little people he's talking about, for not one to go traipsing around with official brass. he got the idea we are greatly misunderstood in Europe because we've allowed the Rusto get the jump on us with the word ‘‘peace.” “With every bayonet we make,” Ben believes, ‘we've got to put a little dove of peace on it. We won't get the right kind of European army until we make the people believe our motives are purely defensive and not offensive. It think it's time we restored the word peace to itz old meaning.” 1 = = GOT THIS philosophy off his chest, Ben leaned back, for all the world like somebody's Kindly uncle in a rocking chair waiting for the kinfolk to spin a yarn or sing a mountain tune
|flans
HAVING
river
Ben is .
From them, .
uted scenery, draperies and props to his living room La Scala. Lohner varies his per= formances; his repertoire includes dozens of operas, but his favorites are Rigoletto, Faust and Tosca. EJ = = THERE IS ‘A REAL crusade behind what Lohner calls his “Home Opera Club.” It is designed simply to give people a better understanding of grand opera. “No amount of labor, effort, cost, study or time,” he says, “can deter me from my battle in behalf of that almost unknown stepchild, opera. Once the plots underlying the individual operas are known to the average American, the language barrier will be at least half-raised.” . Opera stars he's met in his airline singers like Ferrucio Tagliavini and Italo Tajo—have praised his efforts. Dr. George Cuneo. the Italian consul in Chicago, wrote in Lohner’'s guest book; “To the kind Mr. Oscar, with my admiration for his most vivid passion for art.” Vivid is the right word for Oscar Lohner.
The philosophy and the dappling smile are disarming; Ben knows what it i8 to fight, too. He fought the Germans in
two wars, was gassed in the -
first and got anemia in the second. And now the German literary world wants him to be its patron,
That this gentle humorist can also be a good propagandist has occurred to our own State Department. “Children of Noah,” a collection of glimpses into the quiet waters and backwoods of (America, is being translated by the Voice of
America for publication in many languages. 2 = s IN BERLIN, one newspaper
asked him to write a thought for the day, and he put down: “When all the peoples of the world remember to laugh, particularly at themselves, there will be no more dictators and no more wars.”
Another paper had its own words for Ben. It called him “Diogenes from the Mississippi.”
He is pleasantly flattered, and while he has no intention of living up to full possibilities of the role, the thought of Ben Lucien Burman holding a lantern as he strides along in his battered gray hat makes him laugh real hard — at Ben Lucien Burman.
Bliss Ends With A Hiss
“So, I'm surg," the friend sald “that Franchot will be the one to go to court.” Mrs. Kent Moglin, friend of the newlyweds, said their wedding bliss might have blown-up suddenly around dinner time last night, “I called Barbara at 6 o'clock,” she explained, “and everything was lovely-dovey then. 1 don't know anything
about a separation ‘or divorce.” But a lawyer friend of the starlet said Barbara stomped out of their Hillside love nest after a bitter quarrel. “They had a terrible fight," the friend said. the same old stuff. Franchot was jeaious and Barbara lost her temper.
“It was about’
IN. HAPPIER DAYS—Franchot Yons: and Barbara shown while on honeymoon visit in Washington, ; v
capacity—Metropolitan -