The Pittsburgh Press (July 10, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – Well, Chicago has always been a glamorous city to people of all ages, but right now it has an attraction that makes it practically irresistible to small boys. It seems that in Chicago there’s a shortage of soap.
Goodness, I hope that with all the other transportation problems we won’t have the roads clogged with hitchhiking little boys carrying signs like “On to Chicago – Where You Don’t Have to Wash Behind Your Ears.”
It’s too bad this had to happen to Chicago this summer instead of last. Because when I was there then covering the national political conventions, they were certainly handing out enough soft soap to go around.
The Pittsburgh Press (July 11, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – Our nice President Truman only recently returned from a vacation, and now Prime Minister Churchill has gone on his. I think it’s kind of cute to see how vacation habits differ between these leaders of two great nations.
Churchill took his paint box with him. George says an American President wouldn’t dare do that, because his political opponents would criticize his paintings. Our Presidents always play safe and go fishing. Goodness knows, it’s hard to criticize a fish, especially these days, with food so hard to get.
Also I notice Mr. Churchill took his butter along with him to France. He probably wanted to finish it before his meeting with Truman and Stalin in Potsdam. The whole world may be divided up at that meeting and Churchill apparently didn’t want to take any chances with his Butter.
The Pittsburgh Press (July 12, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – Well, at this writing Adm. Halsey isn’t getting much cooperation playing post office with the Japanese fleet and air force. He keeps sending nice invitations to the Japs telling exactly where his fleet is, and what nice luscious ships are in it. But, still no answer.
The Japs are probably scratching their heads, trying to think up their next move. On second thought, with a thousand of our planes attacking Tokyo, they’re probably moving now. I don’t think they’d come out even if Hedy Lamarr was there on the Admiral’s job.
Gracious, if you ask me, I wouldn’t be surprised if Adm. Halsey’s action in telling the enemy exactly where he is and what he’s got might revolutionize the war business. My guess is, the first result would be a lot of spies either retiring or going into the fish business.
Youngstown Vindicator (July 13, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
A Swedish scientist says he believes that wars are caused by the effect of sunspots on people. Well! Can’t you just see Hermann Goering standing up in the war criminals’ court as though Danish butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, saying: “Not guilty on account of sunspots!” And Hirohito would have even a better defense. He claims descent from the sun goddess, and could argue that he was simply a victim of heredity.
If you ask me, this whole idea of sunspots affecting people is pretty dangerous. Just think, your husband could walk right up to a strange girl and kiss her, and then calmly blame the whole thing on sunspots. Still, it could work to advantage, too. Girls, we could come home with a new coat or a couple of hats and say “I’m sorry, dear, but I simply couldn’t help myself. It was very sunspotty out today.”
The Pittsburgh Press (July 16, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
I can remember when all you had to do to make a movie audience “ooooh” and “aaaah” was to show them a nice long romantic kiss, or Marlene Dietrich’s legs, or a cute dog or baby. But those are nothing these days to a scene showing an actor tucking away a steak or a platter of fried chicken.
And no bobbysoxers ever screamed louder over Sinatra than some movie fans over just seeing corn on the cob (with butter) in technicolor.
Talent scouts keep watching the Hollywood restaurants in the hope of seeing a visiting beauty-contest winner eating a steak or chop. Then they sign the steak or chop.
So wait, folks, for the big movie hits, coming soon, like Little Old New York Cut, The Dessert Song and Ali Baba and the Forty Beeves.
The Pittsburgh Press (July 17, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – I see where a Chicago judge told a woman charged with shooting her husband that too many women are shooting their husbands these days. Well, I agree with him.
A lot of us women go to the trouble of saving every drop of grease to turn it in and make bullets for the Army and then some selfish creature wastes ammunition on her husband. As that judge said, it’s no wonder there’s a husband shortage.
Some silly women just can’t get it through their heads that they can’t go out and get a new husband or a new washing machine or a new girdle simply because the earlier models don’t appeal to them anymore.
Where these scarce articles are concerned they might as well make up our minds to get along with the ones we have. Please, ladies, pull yourselves together.
The Pittsburgh Press (July 18, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – My goodness, if American housewives had any inkling how the delegates were going to live during the Big Three Conference in Potsdam, that cruiser carrying President Truman would have been full of stowaways.
The story says the living quarters there are furnished with 20 electric refrigerators, 50 vacuum cleaners and 90 electric irons. The eyes of every woman will be on that conference waiting to see the fate of all those scarce appliances. Twenty lawnmowers and a hundred bedside lamps were also mentioned. I guess the lawnmowers are there because President Truman doesn’t want any grass to grow under his feet.
And those bedside lams probably were provided so the American delegates won’t miss their comic strips. It will be nice for them to read about characters who have more problems than they have.
The Pittsburgh Press (July 19, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – Girls, did you read what that nice Admiral McCain said about American women?
Why, according to him, we’re practically winning the war because of the way we toughen up the American man at home.
The Admiral says the Japanese men get an inflated ego because their wives aren’t allowed to criticize them. Then when they go out and pick on a stranger like Uncle Sam and he smacks them down, they don’t understand it.
You see Japanese wives, being practically slaves, can’t develop their men’s imagination. A Japanese man, coming home at 4 a.m. after losing fifty yen at cards doesn’t have to dream up a story. It’s his wife who is scared, not he.
So girls, the next time you henpeck your husband, I hope he realizes that it isn’t because you have a nagging disposition. You’re merely being patriotic!
The Pittsburgh Press (July 20, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – Well, there’s one shortage we could stand and that’s a shortage of Hitler’s. The only thing more mysterious than his disappearance is the number of his reappearances. Now he’s reported in Liechtenstein, Argentina and the Antarctic. I suppose the FBI will check the Liechtenstein story as soon as they can find the place on the Map. I don’t believe the report that Hitler’s on a German ranch in Argentina. Being a cowboy gaucho might have appealed to him once, but George says he’s had one hard fall from the saddle, and doubts if he has nerve enough to climb into another one.
My guess is that Hitler’s in the Antarctic – raising an army of penguins. Those birds already have black and white uniforms, and after a few setting-up exercises should do a pretty god goose step. Also, they’re about the only things left whom Hitler could convince he’s a genius.
The Pittsburgh Press (July 23, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
I think we should all be very grateful for the least little sign that the world is getting back to normal, so I’m glad to hear that people have the time to begin seeing those sea serpents again.
Did you notice that the two reported so far were both near Europe, one off England and the other off Sweden? I guess that California and Florida had better get busy if they want to hold their tourist trade, when transportation also returns to normal.
Probably those monsters made themselves scarce while the Nazis were in charge of Europe, knowing they could not stand the competition.
That sea serpent seen near England was certainly a whooper, 10 feet broad. It was fast, too. I said maybe Henry Kaiser is turning them out to relieve the transportation problem. George said if Kaiser was doing it, we’d see a lot more of them.
The Pittsburgh Press (July 24, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
Goodness, it looks as though we bobbysoxers have begun a fad that is sweeping the country. Have you noticed that the older ladies are going in for those short little-boy pants and checkered shirts?
I know that some of the sophisticated older ladies like the style, but I somehow can’t picture Whistler’s Mother sitting there rocking in a pair of short denims.
Ladies who wear little-boy pants have a brand-new excuse for not having dinner ready when their husbands get home: “I’m sorry, dear, but the truant officer tried to arrest me today for playing hooky.”
But I’m afraid some mean husband would answer, “that officer made a natural mistake, one that I’m going to make now,” and then make it with a hairbrush right on the seat of her little-boy pants.
Youngstown Vindicator (July 25, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
It seems that when I mentioned grown women wearing little-boy pants yesterday, I only scratched the surface of the clothing mix-up.
And from the looks of things, I’d better not scratch any farther than the surface. For Sen. Homer Ferguson of Michigan told a sympathetic Senate that men are buying and wearing women’s panties because they can’t get men’s shorts and a clothing authority at the University of Illinois charged that teenage girls are using their father’s scarce shirts and work pants.
Poor father! He’ll probably end up playing Lady Godiva. She, at least, had her long blonde tresses to protect her. I don’t know what some of the fathers I know are going to do. They haven’t enough hair on their heads to make a pair of trousers for a potato bug.
The Pittsburgh Press (July 27, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – As if there isn’t enough to worry about today, a prominent New Jersey hairdresser says women will go bald if they keep tying their hair up on top of their heads n those fashionable new Psyche knots.
Goodness, that’s terrible! How are women going o catch up on their gossip if they stay home while the mailman takes their hair down to the beauty shop to be overhauled? And it would certainly look funny if the leading man opened his watch and took out a tiny lock of hair tweezed from his sweetheart’s eyebrow.
But when all’s said and done, I think that what goes on inside the head is a lot more important than what goes on outside. Look at Cecil B. DeMille and Jim Farley. It was their brains and determination that made them come out on top.
The Pittsburgh Press (July 30, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – Winston Churchill has shown us how he wins a war, and now he shows us how gracefully he can lose an election. Either way, he looks like a champion to George and me.
Of course, Clement Attlee, who defeated him, is pretty smart, too. While Attlee was in San Francisco, he was a dinner guest of some American friends and insisted on washing the dishes afterwards. That family doesn’t know yet whether he was being a perfect guest, or on account of the shortages in Europe he just wanted the thrill of putting his hands in real, soapy water again.
My own theory of the English election is that Churchill got some of his own brand of cigars for his campaign managers to pass out, and they did. After the managers passed out, that was the finish of the election.
The Pittsburgh Press (July 31, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
George Bernard Shaw, the famous old playwright, who always seems to be losing his temper, just celebrated his 89th birthday.
My butcher told me about it. My butcher said Mr. Shaw is a vegetarian, and that if you want to be 89 years old and smart, the way to do it is to live on carrots and rutabagas, and not come around pestering butchers for steaks and pot roasts.
Personally, I don’t think much of Mr. Shaw’s vegetarian theory. I always wanted George to be literary, so I once put him on a vegetable diet for three months, and at the end of it he still couldn’t write a line.
In fact, he’s been kind of delicate ever since. I pointed out to George that Mr. Shaw spent his 89th birthday working. George said he didn’t mind waiting until his 89th birthday to go to work.
The Pittsburgh Press (August 1, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
I read where Hermann Goering is afraid of thunder and lightning.
If I had his record I would be, too. It probably reminds him of the Allied Air Force.
Goering is in an extra bad spot during a thunderstorm because no bed is high enough for anyone of his build to crawl under.
The story said that Goering was in such bad shape as a result of that thunderstorm that it might mean as much as his life is worth to put him on trial for mass murder.
Well, I think he ought to have a little rest before his trial. Send him to one of those lovely little Nazi resort cities like Belsen or Buchenwald where he sent so many others. And fellow, will you be sure to give Hermann a nice room with a view?
The Pittsburgh Press (August 2, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
The police are afraid to question suspicious looking characters these days for fear they’ll turn out to be members of a Congressional committee investigating something or other.
It seems there are more groups of congressmen traveling to all parts of the glob than there were parties of explorers in the days of Columbus.
I hear the Navy is fighting to keep its old slogan from being changed to “Join Congress and See the World.”
George says that in the old days when a strange white man dropped in on a savage tribe, they hailed him as a god. Now they ask him to get them an appropriation.
The next thing we’ll have on our hands will be strangers at the back door saying they are congressmen soliciting magazine subscriptions so they can investigate their way through college.
The Pittsburgh Press (August 3, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
The fat-salvage campaign is getting somewhere.
Housewives have been turning in their waste grease to the butchers for two years.
Now Pierre Laval has turned himself in. It’s certainly a pitiful sight. It looks as though Laval hasn’t a friend in the world left to double-cross.
When arrested he probably told the truth for the first time in his life when he said he wished he was in New York. And he was about the only “big shot” among our enemies who had his own wife with hm at the finish.
He’s certainly the right type for a traitor. Even his name is two-faced. No matter if you spell it forward or backward, it still spells Laval.
The Pittsburgh Press (August 6, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
My goodness, Clare Boothe Luce has picked a fine way to spend her vacation from Congress. She’s going to do the starring part in George Bernard Shaw’s Candida and if that isn’t a mailman’s holiday, I don’t know what is.
There’s not really much difference in being in Congress and on the stage, except in Congress you’re in for a two-year run no matter how bad you are. Of course, if you’re in Congress you don’t have to show up for every performance. If actors did that, too, it certainly would improve a lot of plays.
I think Mrs. Luce will find that Congress is even stagier than the stage. Why? A good congressman, one who can keep on getting elected, can put more tears into his plea for a new post office than Eliza ever drew crossing the ice.
The Pittsburgh Press (August 7, 1945)
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – I’ve been reading about the Petain trial and I honestly think the French way of trying people is better than ours.
Take the jury, for instance. When members of the Petain jury got bored with the testimony, they read newspapers or worked crossword puzzles or just plain went to sleep. Over here the poor things have to listen, even if they don’t know which end of the plaintiff to mark with their ballots.
George says that in our courts only the lawyers can yell and I believe him, because George, like most husbands, is an authority on yelling. But in those French courts anybody – judge, jury, witnesses, spectators – can get into it and yell. We talk about justice being blind, but in France it must be deaf, too.
Anyhow, I like the spirit of everybody joining in the game and if the prisoner is found guilty, he doesn’t mind so much going to jail where things are quiet.