Hollywood gossip and what happened afterwards

Here’s what I learned about a few of the people in this Hollywood gossip column from the Nov. 14, 1952 Lancaster Eagle-Gazette: Jane Wyman got better, but her marriage to German composer Freddie Karger lasted only two years. Shelly Winters’ marriage to actor Vittorio Gassman also lasted two years, but her baby Vittoria is now a physician in Connecticut.  Eve Arden of “Our Miss Brooks” was an honorary member of the National Education Association.  Nick Hilton, Paris’ great uncle, died of alcoholism at 42. And Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, the parents of Jamie Lee Curtis, divorced 10 years later. 

The adventure of winter driving

The frost was clearly on the pumpkin when this ad ran in the Nov. 12, 1952 Lancaster Eagle-Gazette. Generic methanol antifreeze evaporated over the winter, but the costlier DuPont Zerone did not. If you could afford them, Zerex or Prestone would last all year. Many cars had neither heaters nor defrosters, so you’d glue plastic ‘frost shields’ to your windows, buy a heavy plaid Troy auto robe to fit over your lap and legs, and clamp a Calrod engine heater onto a radiator hose, plugging it overnight into an extension cord so the car might start in the morning. 

An unsuccessful double bill at the Lyric

“Back to the Front” was a second attempt at commercializing Willie and Joe, the long-suffering World War II infantrymen immortalized in Bill Mauldin’s Stars and Stripes cartoons.  There was Tom Ewell and music by Henry Mancini, but apparently war comedies just didn’t work by the time this ad ran in the Nov. 15, 1952 Lancaster Eagle-Gazette.  And the short film featuring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis is a mystery, for “Hollywood at Play” is listed nowhere on the movie-crazy Internet.  I think it might be a newsreel ‘featurette’ about movie stars with Dean and Jerry narrating.                 

The Fairfield County Republican Women’s Club Battles Marxism

It’s unlikely that we’ll ever find out how much Communism there was in Ohio when the Fairfield County Republican ladies held their meeting, for while there was a scattering of active Russian-trained agents in a few labor unions, every single attempt to ignite a Communist revolution in the US failed utterly.  But few thought so when this article ran in the Nov. 14, 1952 Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, for a largely-misguided anti-Communist effort had convinced Americans that we were ripe for an easy Bolshevik takeover.  The Russians themselves were puzzled, observing much later that the ‘50’s hysteria actually aided their espionage work.