Coral Gables Riviera-Times

Thursday, November 27, 1947, page 4 (of 8)

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Coral Gables Riviera-Times

Published Monday through Friday afternoons by the Riviera Publishing Company, 206 Avenue Aragon, Coral Gables 34, Fla. Established as a weekly newspaper January, 1926; combined with the Dade County & Coconut Grove Times, 1929. Published daily except Saturday and Sunday. MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL EDITORIAL ASSOCIATION. / PHOTO ENGRAVING. Albert E. Harum, Editor and Publisher; Kenneth S. Reynolds, Business Manager; James B. Moore, Managing Editor; Helen Reynolds, Society Editor; Edward W. Wright, Circulation Manager. / Frost & Scruton, New York-Chicago-Atlanta-Detroit National Advertising Representatives / MEMBER: UNITED PRESS FULL LEASED WIRE SERVICE / Member 1947 NATIONAL EDITORIAL ASSOCIATION / SUBSCRIPTION RATES—Six months, $6.00; one year, outside of United States, $15.00; local, $12.00; one year, out-of-town, $14.00, daily delivery by carrier, 25 cents per week. Entered as Second Class Matter May 21, 1926, at the Post Office at Miami Fla., under the Act of March 3, 1879. / Mail Address, Box 4872, Coral Gables 34, Florida. Phone 4-2561. Classified Dept. 48-1647. / The Coral Gables Riviera-Times is liable for errors in advertising only to the extent of the space in which the advertisement appears.

City of Godliness

By HELEN REYNOLDS / Coral Gables has lots for which to be thankful. It is a city of beautiful homes, a place to rear children as witness by over 3,000 children attending its schools, and it is a city of Godliness marked by many churches. / If you are skeptical as to that statement, take a swing some Sunday morning between the hours of 10 and 11 through the business section. Gone are the parked automobiles that line the streets from Monday through Saturday. At the Methodist Church on Coral Way at Segovia Street, parking will be at a premium and a uniformed policeman is usually on duty directing traffic. Within two blocks, the broad stone steps of stairs leading to the Christian Science Church will be noted filled with worshippers filing into the church. As you pause at the intersection of Coral Way and LeJeune for the traffic light, you may, if you listen, hear the Carillonier's chimes atop the Presbyterian Church ring out the quarter hour. The church, placed at a strategic angle in the middle of Alhambra Plaza, is in the dead center of the business section; here, too, unlimited parking spaces are eagerly gobbled up. On up Ponce de Leon Blvd., three more heavily parked areas denote three Coral Gables churches: the First Christian, St. James, Ev. Lutheran and the Country Club Christian, hard by the Public Library. / If you are still wondering what Gableites do on Sunday morning swing on out to the vicinity of the Veterans Hospital. You'll have time. Directly across the way from the venerable building (the former swank Biltmore Hotel) is Coral Gables' "land mark" church, the Congregational. Placed in an angle formed by three intersecting streets the double line of parked automobiles that grace the eye is proof of a packed church. Within a shift of gears either north or east, you may come upon either the Catholic Church of the Little Flower or the Episcopal St. Phillips. Both church parking areas will be jammed with cars. / Of the seven churches mentioned above (there are 12 within the boundary limits oof the city) five are in the downtown area, a very vital evidence of a city of Godliness.

HOLLYWOOD FILM SHOP

By PATRICIA CLARY United Press Staff Correspondent / HOLLYWOOD (UP)—Reginald Gardiner, the effete English gentleman, is bouncing along in the movies on two horses—one real and one stuffed. / It's a toss-up, he said, as he took his tea off the mantle, which horse was harder on him. / In the mornings, Gardiner rides a coal-black stallion named, and aptly, "Hellion," for 20th Century-Fox's "Ballad of Furnace Creek." He's a two-gun wild west outlaw in that one. / In the afternoons, Gardiner puts on a beard and 60 pounds of armor and climbs aboard the stuffed horse for the same studio's "This Is the Moment." / In this one, Gardiner is Betty Grable's adoring, 13th century husband who, along with her other portrait ancestors, comes to life periodically to revile her for suspected goings-on with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. / Stuffed Horse Rears / The stuffed horse is built with special armatures so it really rears on its hind legs when it and Gardiner step from the portrait. / "'Hellion' lives up to his name," Gardiner admitted, "but I find the stuffed mount the greater of the evils even though he has only one gait—rearing. His sense of rhythm is a painfully unpredictable staccato." / At this point Jean goes Miss Grable's lowered the portrait horse, his two assistants raised the armored actor to his stuffed steed, and producer-director Ernst Lubitsch called for rehearsal. / Gardiner pressed a well-concealed button on the horse. It shot up in a quintupled jerk. / He hung on manfully, as dignified as the shuddering horse would allow, while cast and crew howled with laughter. / "You may call this 'The Portrait of a Stuffed Shirt on a Stuffed Horse,'" he gasped between jerks, "and it's a toss-up which of us has the stuffing shaken out first."

Under the Gun

ANTEOPE, N. D.(UP)—Anton Erbstosser, 21, claims to have been the youngest commissioned postmaster in the United States when he was appointed here. Erbstosser got his commission Nov. 17, 1941, the day he was 21 years old. A postmaster by law must be at least 21.

Hopes to Get There

LITTLESTOWN, Pa. (UP)—Nevaeh A. Crouse, contractor, has a good start. He points out that his first name is "Heaven" spelled backward.

ABOUT TOWN Thanksgiving Thoughts

By Jim Moore / I suppose that just about this time hundreds of writers all over the country are seated before their typewriters trying to think of something new to say about Thanksgiving. / But whether you live in Bar Harbor, Maine, or Coral Gables, Florida actually there isn't anything really different about what we ought to say. It's a day that's been handed down by our Pilgrim fathers for us to sit and remember our blessings and thank God for what he has bestowed upon us. / But it's a darned good idea—something that we need very badly. It's so easy to recount our woes, so easy to forget the blessings that we do have. / "What's so wonderful?" a cynic could easily say. "Prices are sky high. The turkey cost its weight in gold. The Democrats have made a mess of things, the Republicans are floundering around not doing much better. General Meyers used $10,000 of the taxpayers' money to furnish an apartment and a GI can't find a place to live in Coral Gables or anywhere else in the United States. / "Russia has the atom bomb and is going to blow us off the face of the earth; Miami is trying to gobble Coral Gables in a phony consolidation deal and the Orange Bowl committee picked a New York model as theme girl. So what's there to be happy about?" / Well I suppose that there is plenty to gripe about—but then I don't recall a year that there hasn't been. This year isn't any worse than a lot of other years, and as far as I'm concerned it's a darned sight better than a couple of 'em that I ate my Thanksgiving dinner in North Africa and a lot of guys ate B rations in fox holes. / Today I'm going to sit down and stuff myself full of turkey with all the trimmings. I'm going to be in a house with a roof, among congenial friends and in what I think is the swellest town in the whole world. After dinner I'm going to stretch out in an easy chair, hold my hands over a well-filled tummy, half close my eyes and listen to a football game going on somewhere in these United States. / Somewhere else in the world, a guy in tatters is going to take a crust of bread or a bowl of water-thin soup, kneel down on the cold, hard earth and lift his eyes heavenward to thank God for having given him enough to last through another day.

SHORT QUIRKS

Santa Sails for Holland / NEW YORK, (UP)—Santa Claus, in the form of thousands of Christmas gifts, was aboard the SS Nieuw Amsterdam when it sailed for Holland. The gifts, with plenty of toys for Dutch children, will be given to 5,000 cold-stricken children in the Netherlands. Most of the gifts were from Brielle, N. J. / Geese Not So Dumb / DEVIL'S LAKE, N. D. (UP)—Two local hunters decided the fox isn't as smart as he's reputed to be. William A. Jerome and Bud Roberts bagged a fox when it crept too close to their goose decoys. The decoys fooled the hungry fox, but Jerome said the geese flying overhead weren't fooled. / Joe Shivers / AKRON, Ind. (UP)—The local fire chief was in a dilemma when the alarm sounded at night, and, he couldn't find his shoes. He ran to the blaze and tackled it barefooted. It was a chilly fall night and he shivered. His name—Joe Shivers. / No Customers / GOSHEN, Ind. (UP)—Pete Vlassis has added a new dish to the menu in his Bungalo Grill, but it's stewed octopus. So far, Pete says nobody has had enough nerve to ask for it. / Angler's Haul Mixed Up / INDIANAPOLIS, (UP)—Leonard Brammer went fishing for bass at night. He caught a 15-inch one and then landed another catch—a hoot owl with a wing spread of nearly 45 inches. / One Use for It / ALBANY, N. Y. (UP)—The War Assets Administration sold one of its surplus barrage balloons to a nearby tavern keeper. He said he would use it for a flying advertisement to inform the public that his establishment was "500 feet ahead." / Neighbors Make Good / CIRCLEVILLE, O. (UP)—Walter Southward had to leave his farm for the hospital. He worried about his crops. When he returned he found neighbors had picked his 65 acres of corn and planted 65 acres in wheat. / Got His Target / MOULTRIE, Ga. (UP)—Alfred Alsop, out hunting, opened fire on a white-tail deer in the woods. Alsop thought he saw him drop and ran to the spot. Sure enough, there lay his target—the white tail. The deer was gone. / Flying Begins at 66 / Battle Creek, Mich. (UP)—Flying began at 66 for Guy E. Russell. Bored by his two-year retirement from his job of making cereals, Russell joined the Kellogg Creek Flying Club and won his license. His next job is to persuade his wife to fly with him, he says. / Prized Mice Destroyed / BAR HARBOR, Me. (UP)—When fire destroyed the Roscoe Jackson Memorial Laboratory, the flames consumed hundreds of mice used in cancer research. Some of the valuable mice had medical records extending back through 35 generations.

A SONG OF THANKSGIVING

By CLARENCE HAWKES The Blind Poet of Hadley, Mass. Written for United Press / There's a song of deep thanksgiving / Rising in our land today; / Once again, we all are living / In the old accustomed way. / Praising God beneath the steeple / On the Church upon the hill. / Just a radiant, happy people, / Begging hatred to be still. / Pleading that our peace sublime / Will last until the end of time. / But we'll not forget those others, / Who are coming home today; / They were sweethearts, sons and brothers, / What a price they had to pay! / Coming home across the ocean / To the land they fought to save, / Without a thrill or an emotion / To a soldier's lowly grave. / Our hearts are full, our cheeks are wet; / God help us never to forget! / To the needy we are faithful, / Giving of our gold and grain; / Though some pleading is untruthful, / Yet we give and give again. / Give to those who fought beside us, / Give to enemies of old, / Feel the pure, angelic beside us, / From our grainfields and our gold. / God grant mankind may rise again / To toil and strive and live like men.

FROM A RIVIERA NOTEBOOK

By Mary Helm Clarke / AN EARLY THANKSGIVING / In our time it has been most confusing to have Thanks-giving shifted from the fourth Thursday in November to the third, and back to the fourth, but the Riviera Note-book tells of the time when Thanksgiving was observed the last of September. / The first Sunday after the hurricane of 1926, many families were too busy to go to church. One family in their houseboat, at least only the top of it showed above the water. They rescued a bed and a chair and a table and set up housekeeping again on the roof of the submerged boat. / Another family lost their chicken house and received a neighbor's garage in its place, but they couldn't eat the garage nor turn it into ready cash, so they spent Sunday rounding up the hens. / On the outskirts of the town, where flimsy structures were razed, housewives gathered clothing and furniture in piles and hoisted a flag over the heap to claim it. They went off to church but the Notebook doesn't record a single instance when such a pile of belongings was molested. / After the people were housed and families were back in their homes, Mayor Edward C. Romph, Mayor of Miami called for a general day of Thanksgiving. His proclamation summoned the people to "assemble in their respective houses of worship on next Sunday and there offer up sincere thanksgiving to the Almighty God for His help in time of need and His protection from great dangers to health and strength and courage." / And so, the second Sunday after the hurricane, the people gathered in varied "houses of worship." Large crowds filled wrecked churches, others gathered in homes. People who were not in the habit of attending Sunday services crowded into theatres, tents, and parks, even race track bleachers were used for gatherings dedicated to giving thanks—for health and strength and courage. / No doubt another Thanksgiving Day was observed in November, a traditional Thanksgiving with turkey and pumpkin pie, but it is safe to assume that the song "Come, Ye Thankful People, Come!" never met with a heartier response than Mayor Romph's proclamation calling for a September Thanksgiving.

It Says Here

That luscious looking drumstick which appears in the grasp of young Frank Froehling on Page One of today's paper was provided by Leo's Delicatessen. Uncle Martin from station WBAY helped Photographer Bob Binner and Managing Editor Jim Moore bring a grin to the youngster's face. . . . We hear that the owner of a large stable of racing horses is planning to build a hotel in the Gables. . . . which brings to mind that Dr. L. D. Pankey was going to erect one on Alhambra Circle. . . . what's up, Doc? / Carroll Daniels, who braved a month of carpenter's saws, plasterers and electricians during construction work on his enlarged store, got "away from it all" this week. Son Warner's doing the proprietary role in his absence. / Detective Delbert Edwards threatens to call our City Desk at 3 a. m. some morning just to show he's on the job at that unseemly hour. . . . we still don't believe there's much crime at dawn-time. And speaking of detectives and such reminds us that the new electric buzzer in the station house is creating quite a traffic problem. You can't get in behind the desk (or out) unless the desk sergeant pushes the button. As a consequence everyone inside wants to get out and everyone outside wants to get in—an almost universal desire, it seems. / The Friendship Train would have done better in Coral Gables if they'd arrived on some kind of schedule. They were originally slated to be here Friday, then Thursday—then they showed up Wednesday noontime without no advance notice. / Some Kind of Record / Fort Worth, Texas (UP)—Officers were surprised when they charged a Fort Worth man with two cases of assault to murder and learned that he had been arrested 475 times previously. In addition to the two assault charges, also pending were charges of forgery and drunkenness.

FOR YOUR REAL ESTATE NEEDS SEE LESLIE H. COOMBES REALTOR

FOR YOUR REAL ESTATE NEEDS SEE / LESLIE H. COOMBES / REALTOR / 2312 Ponce de Leon Blvd. Phone 4-2586

UP AND DOWN BROADWAY

By JACK GAVER United Press Drama Editor / NEW YORK (UP)—Norman Z. McLeod, who directed two of the pictures Danny Kaye made for Sam Goldwyn, refuses to get excited about the controversy over the last one, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." / "No one admires the work of James Thurber more than I do," McLeod said, referring to the author of the short story appearing in the New Yorker magazine which formed the basis for the film. "I'm a Thurber fan from away back. But it was the job of the writers and myself to put them into a movie for Kaye and we simply had to take some dramatic liberties." / McLeod said Thurber himself okayed the shooting script at one time, only to come out with a bitter blast about the finished product, charging distortion of the Thurber brand of whimsy and satire. "Mitty," which has been showing here for months, is now ready for general release. / The director is in town for several weeks, putting out some feelers about a highly unusual film he wants to make next. Since he is a free-lance, he has to line up a studio, among other details. So far, it's top secret stuff. / McLeod has just completed "Paleface" at Paramount, with Bob Hope and Jane Russell in the cast. / "You may notice some changes in Hope on the screen," McLeod said. "He's strictly a gag man, you know—his weekly radio program keeps him in that groove—but I've been having some success in making him care about the story and the value of visual comedy. I think you'll find him a better movie comic in 'Paleface' than he has been before." / He also had a good word for Miss Russell, who got by in her first picture, "The Outlaw," because attention was centered on her physical attraction and censorship battles about the movie, but incurred the critics' wrath as an actress in her second. / "You must remember that she's a girl with little acting experience and that her second picture had poor direction. Burgan's rewritten finished," McLeod explained. "With that condition, she couldn't be expected to know what was going on. But she's a hard worker, eager to learn and I think she'll make the grade." / Comedian Jimmy Savo, now back at his old stand, Cafe Society Uptown, sent George Bernard Shaw a copy of his new book, "Little World, Hello!" He wrote this inscription: "To George Bernard Shaw: Now there are two of us. I, too, am considered a clown—and an author."

Reviewing the New Books

By UNITED PRESS / Cecil Roberts is a British cousin, a writer and lecturer, who has seen American paths wisely and well, and in his book, And So To America (Doubleday, $5), he writes an Englishman's version of "Inside America" but with more humor than we generally attribute to his race. / Interesting are his contributions to a better notion of Churchill in pantaloons or Lord Halifax in front of his red leather despatch box. He discourses interestingly too on New England and the single difficulties with his Vermont neighbors. And it was interesting to an Englishman to find that a century before Wallis Simpson, another Baltimore Belle, Elizabeth Patterson, threw the courts of Europe into an uproar by becoming the bride of Napoleon's youngest brother Jerome. America was full of such pleasant surprises to Cecil Roberts and he barely scratched the surface. / Sometimes it seems as though the "iron curtain" between Russia and America has always been there. Picking up the latest issue of a New York or Moscow newspaper it is hard to imagine that so delicate a thing as an idea has ever been transmitted from one country to the other. / David Hecht, a Russian specialist at Bowdoin College, has written a book which dispels this illusion: Russian Radicals Look to America (Harvard $4). / Hecht's work is not likely to be widely read. But it should be. Contrary to our general impressions Russian thought was drawn heavily upon American experience. It began with the revolution of 1775 and continues to this day. Startling as it may seem the ideas which underlay the American Revolution had a great deal to do with that which occurred in Russia in 1917. / John D. Burgan's Two Per Cent Fear (Farrar, Straus, $2.75), tells the story of a detachment of navy stevedores—two officers and 40 men—fighting their little slice of the war in the Pacific, and finding it "98 per cent boredom and two per cent fear." The chapters dealing with a landing on a Japanese-held island and the fierce fighting there are especially effective. Burgan's restrained writing brings home to the reader a sense of the terror and exaltation men found in combat. This is not the AAI Qpiet of the Second World War, but it is a sound, well constructed and thoughtful novel. / Raoul de Roussy de Sales was a descendant of two old French aristocratic families. In his veins flowed the blood of St. Francis de Sales, patron saint of journalists. He was a Frenchman of great culture and refinement, an independent political thinker and a superb craftsman. As the New York correspondent of Paris Soir and the political correspondent of the Havas agency from 1934 to 1940, he became known as one of Europe's outstanding journalists. His diaries from 1938 to his death in 1942 are now published under the title The Making of Yesterday (Reynal & Hitchcock, $4.50). / Edward Tolninson, adviser on Inter-American affairs to the National Broadcasting Company, analyzes the politico-economic struggles between forces of the left, the right and democracy in South America in Battle for the Hemisphere (Scribner's $3.50). After reviewing the Communists' methods and gains, he deals frankly with the Peron regime in Argentina. He concludes that forthright U. S. action is urgently required to head off possible catastrophic developments. / A tense and terse tale—a love story, if you like—about an American scientist, and American heiress become journalist, and the stultifying role of science fettered for war—is told in Nothing So Strange, by James Hilton (Atlantic-Little, Brown, $2.75). / Little of the emotion in this book is explicit. And because so much emotion and so many words have been spilled elsewhere upon the subject of The Bomb, the climax may seem a little flat to many readers. A Literary Guild choice.

Santa Visits French Town Again Villagers Believe in Him Now, Thanks to U. S. Couple

By FRANK TREMAINE United Press Staff Correspondent / MAILLE (UP) (By Mail)—Santa Claus is off on one of his earliest trips of 1947, lugging three crates the size of dining room tables to a tiny village in France, where faith in Santa Claus almost died three years ago. / The crates contain packages for all the nearly 400 inhabitants of the village of Maille, near Tours, including its 158 children and the "four susceptible of being born before Christmas." / Many of the children hadn't even heard of Santa Claus before last Christmas, and wouldn't have believed in him if they had. Santa Claus and all the other good spirits seemed to have abandoned the little town one day in August, 1944. / That was the day when a company of German troops killed 126 of the population, slaughtered the livestock and razed the village as punishment for harboring a downed British flier. Then, in April, 1946, Girard and Kathleen Hale, of Santa Barbara, Calif., stepped into the picture. / The increase in Maille's juvenile population from 141 a year and a half ago to the present 158 and "four susceptible of being born before Christmas" is only part of the continuing progress reported to the Hales. The rebirth started in 1946, shortly after the Hales began playing year-round Santa Claus by sending off a shipment of 7,000 items ranging from layettes and workmen's clothes to furniture for the city hall. / "At first our letters from the village were stiff and formal," said Mrs. Hale, who is visiting here. "Now we know just how many pigs Mme. Dubois got in the last litter. The letters are getting bigger, too." / Progress of the war-devastated village also is indicated in the request lists Maille sent to the Hales. The first list, received after the wealthy couple decided to "adopt" the town, consisted largely of the downright essentials of every-day living—clothing, eating utensils, frying pans and household linens. / Now the Hales are sending such things as rakes and hoes and other farm implements. They even sent a tractor which the villagers call "Girard." / "We wondered about that," Mrs. Hale said, "until we got a letter explaining that no family would dare name a child Girard or Kathleen for fear of making all the other families in the village jealous. So they named the tractor, which belongs to all of them, after Girard." / Progress also is indicated by other signs. / "They have a roof on the school now," Hale said, describing his own five-year plan for helping Europe. "They did that and a lot of other improvements themselves. We sent them blackboards and desks and pencils and chalk and paper enough for a year, but they fixed up the school themselves. / "That's one of the things about personal aid. A hundred of money from the government doesn't provide much incentive, but when people get help from other people in the shape things they can use, they're inspired to get out and help themselves, too." / The Hales estimate they've spent "about $25,000 or $30,000" on their adopted village so far. The villagers won't be "sent on Christmas decorations this year because we saved most of those from last year." / The Christmas boxes contain three gifts for each child in the village and the four on the way—one sweet, one useful gift, "and one just for happiness."

Hotfoot for Firemen

San Antonio, Tex. (UP)—You might say suburban Alamo Heights firemen, are burned up. The night dispatcher received a call and sounded the fire alarm. Before the trucks roared out of the station, some alert fireman remembered 6116 Broadway was the fire station's address.

Right Under Their Noses

New Castle, Ind. (UP)—The pastor of the First Christian Church, across the street from the police station, reported burglars pried open the door to the secretary's office, knocked the combination off the safe and stole $50 collected in church offerings.

Barbering Made Easy

Cherokee, Ia. (UP)—Ben Given, local barber, has more zip these days. Given says never again will he stand all day cutting hair and shaving whiskers—and getting callouses on his feet. He installed a special seat apparatus on a swivel and now sits as he works, moving around the barber chair without getting up.