The Buffalo News (October 10, 1946)
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
Well, I see that a Harvard medical authority says men should wear high heels to improve their feet and their dispositions. For years other medical authorities have urged women to wear low heels to improve their feet and their dispositions, so there must be a fundamental difference between men and women. However, I suppose that’s what makes marriages.
I don’t know much about the effects of high heels on health, but I do know something about their effect on disposition. If a woman’s feet hurt in expensive, fashionable high-heeled shoes her disposition is still good. But if they hurt in cheap, unfashionable high-heeled shoes her disposition is vile.
When I told George that high heels were meant for women and that men would look terribly silly if they wore them, he just pointed at a woman passing by in slacks. So far I haven’t thought of a good retort.
The Pittsburgh Press (October 11, 1946)
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – I see that a Harvard sociologist believes that men who are still single at the age of 25 shouldn’t be allowed to run for public office.
I suppose he figures that a man who has learned to handle a wife when she threatens to go home to mother is better equipped to deal with the Russian delegation when it threatens to go home to Stalin.
He also thinks that all candidates should have children after a reasonable length of time. If matrimony and fatherhood become the basis of selection, it’s quite easy to see what will happen. The President of the United States, Tommy Manville, will be holding conferences with the Premier of Canada – Papa Dionne.
George doesn’t agree with the idea at all. He says it takes an awfully clever man to remain single at the age of 25, and we could use some clever men in public office.
The Pittsburgh Press (October 14, 1946)
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – Well, I just read a story in my newspaper that’s simply unbelievable. It was about a family who had the same maid for fifty years and to make it even more incredible, they gave the maid a party and served a roast. This supposedly took place in Chicago – not paradise.
When I read the story first, I thought it said the family had fifty maids in one year. But I realize that wouldn’t have been news. One maid for fifty years was right. I went over the article very carefully but it failed to mention what they chained her to.
To top the whole thing, this maid’s employer must be an unusual woman, too. When you say you’ve had the same maid for half a century, you’re admitting that you’re at least that old yourself. Personally, I have the feeling that the whole story came out of Hans Christian Anderson.
The Buffalo News (October 15, 1946)
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – Well, I see that an official of the National Safety Council thinks it would be nice if women dressed more sensibly. He doesn’t expect to get anywhere with the idea – no man ever has – but he’s trying.
He’s quoted as saying that a girl wearing frilly clothes, lots of jewelry, high heels and a screwball hat constitutes a “walking accident hazard.” He certainly must be pretty unobservant, or else he’d know that girls dressed that way seldom have to walk.
And while on the subject of screwball hats, I can state emphatically that mine have never constituted a hazard to anything but George’s blood pressure.
So pooh to this idea that just because a woman is stylishly clad, she’s a booby trap.
I say, go ahead and trap the boobies. Goodness, some of them make very good husbands.
The Pittsburgh Press (October 16, 1946)
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – Hey, girls, they’ve got meat in Minneapolis! Honest! On Monday 5,000 pounds of steaks, roasts, and other choice cuts went on sale. How come? It’s buffalo meat.
Well, those Minneapolis housewives are mighty lucky to live where they still have buffalo. Out in my part of the country they seem to be extinct – along with pigs, cows and lambs.
Now I don’t say I’m going to move away from glamorous Hollywood just for a piece of meat, but I will admit that song, “Home on the Range,” has been running through my mind, with slight lyric changes.
Something like this: Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam, and there’s meat on the hoof every day. Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, because there is no OPA.
You take it from there, girls. I have to prepare my husband’s vegetable dinner.
The Pittsburgh Press (October 17, 1946)
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – I promise never to fuss at my husband again on those nights when he leaves me alone to attend his lodge meeting. I’ll just think of Mrs. Truman and realize how lucky I am. Her husband belongs to 218 lodges, clubs and organizations. If he attends all the meetings, I don’t see how he ever finds time to eat at home. And if he pays dues to all of them, I don’t see how he can afford to eat out.
And President Truman has turned down memberships in 115 other organizations. George says about the only one that hasn’t invited him to join is the Republican club.
Personally, I think it’s fine for the president to join clubs. Coolidge never seemed to join anything but Indian tribes. At those Indian powwows, the most anyone ever said was “ugh,” which was just about the right length for a Coolidge conversation.
The Pittsburgh Press (October 18, 1946)
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – The Army has just revealed what is undoubtedly one of its top military secrets. At Fort Belvoir, Va., rookies on the rifle range have brought in the highest marksmanship scores in the history of the fort.
How did the Army accomplish this? Why, while the boys were firing, they listened to Frank Sinatra records. No fooling. The commanding officers said the boys relaxed and were able to hit the bull’s-eye better than ever before.
Well, if you ask me, it was a brave but dangerous experiment. Gracious, I’d certainly hate to put a loaded rifle in the hands of a girl while she’s under the spell of The Volee. Thank goodness the boys reacted differently.
And I predict that this Sinatra influence may get out of hand in our Army. I can’t wait to see a tough sergeant wearing bobby sox.
The Pittsburgh Press (October 21, 1946)
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – I wish I could have been in Washington, D.C., during the hotel strike. What a sight that must have been – all those statesmen and high-powered diplomats cleaning their own rooms and making their own rooms and making their own beds! But considering the speed with which diplomats usually work I doubt if the beds have been made yet.
It must have been a sensational opportunity for congressmen who are campaigning for re-election. Instead of kissing babies and handing out pamphlets, they probably went around making beds and handing out clean towels. Incidentally, there’s a red-hot campaign idea for somebody. Bath towels inscribed, “Let’s clean up with Senator So-and-So.”
But come to think of it the idea must have been used before, because George has a lot of towels from a Mr. Pullman. I wonder what office he ran for?
The Boston Globe (October 22, 1946)
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – In sunny, fertile California we’re used to things growing quickly but I’ve never seen anything grow as quickly as the cattle and hogs which appeared the day after President Truman removed the OPA ceiling. One day the price was right but there was no meat to be seen. The next day we had meat but prices were out of sight.
I was standing at my butcher-shop counter when the first load arrived. Feeling a bit giddy at the sight of so much meat I told the butcher to give me a dollar’s worth of pork chops. He said he was sorry but he couldn’t split a chop. I settled for a dollar’s worth of hamburger which I put in my purse and haven’t been able to find since.
However, as I write this the price of meat is reported to be dropping rapidly. Maybe the good old days are returning. Here’s hoping.
The Pittsburgh Press (October 23, 1946)
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – Well, a psychologist at a California university is telling students how they should do their fighting when they get married, and I consider that a blow at individualism. If all married people fought the same way, there’d be no fun listening to the couple next door.
This psychologist teaches it’s not sporting to refer to your opponent’s size, shape or habits. That’s like saying a war should be fought without guns, bombs or bullets.
George agrees with the idea of not quarreling with a wife who’s cooking dinner. He says men’s suits are too precious to be splattered with a ladle of gravy.
It’s also suggested that family arguments should be settled by ballot, with the children voting on whether mama or papa was right. This would lead to candy-bar bribes from both sides, and all the tots would decide to be politicians when they grew up. Don’t we want progress?
The Buffalo News (October 24, 1946)
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – Well, I see that railroads are planning to run motion pictures for passengers on their trains and I think it gives them a much better break than the average moviegoer gets. Many times I’d have been very happy if I’d had the choice of looking out of a window at part of Kansas instead of at the picture on the screen.
Of course, movies on trains may lead to cutthroat competition. The Alaska and Alabama railroad may try to take all the traveling salesmen away from the Memphis and St. Joe by showing nothing but Jane Russell pictures.
And I’d like to add a word of warning to the people in charge of the transcontinental trains. Don’t keep too many Charles Boyer pictures in stock or when you get to the end of the trip you’ll need a special strong-arm squad to make the women passengers get off.
The Pittsburgh Press (October 25, 1946)
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – Well, I see that a lady author who wrote a book called “Hold Your Man” believes that our best defense against alienisms is the American lipstick, properly applied. I see what she means because in a way, the lipstick and the ism are very much alike. If you go too far to the right or the left with either one you get sort of lopsided.
She also favors government subsidies to teach women how to be beautiful, but I’m not so sure about that. Washington would probably organize an office of beauty administration – which would put a limit on loveliness and fine any woman who went over the charm ceiling. I wouldn’t want poor George to always be paying fines for me.
Personally I think we girls should continue to get our beauty subsidies from our husbands. I’d much rather go through George’s pockets than a lot of red tape.
The Pittsburgh Press (October 28, 1946)
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – Well, I see that children’s toys will be bigger and better this Christmas. For example, this year’s crop of dolls will have a new trick. In addition to going to sleep they’ll be able to laugh, and I’m thinking of getting one. It will make a nice audience when George tells those jokes I’ve heard a thousand times.
Then there will be toy sinks with real running water and mechanical shovels and concrete mixers. With these things the children can build themselves a nice little toy home while their parents are out looking for an apartment.
George said there’s nothing new about toy concrete mixers because I must have used on when I baked my first batch of biscuits. Such a remark certainly proves that you can take the man out of vaudeville but you can’t take vaudeville out of the man.
The Buffalo News (October 29, 1946)
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – Well, I see that a New York judge refused to annul a marriage when the wife admitted she was aware of her husband’s faults before she married him. She said she had hoped to break him of these faults, but the judge held that you can’t divorce a man just because you fail to reform him.
Such a ruling ought to practically do away with divorce. In the first place, it doesn’t take more than one date with a man to spot his faults if a girl is smart, and she must be smart or she’d never have gotten a man to ask her for a date.
In the second place, all wives try to reform their husbands and they all fail. For instance, George has the bad habit of screaming every time I buy a new hat. For years I’ve tried to reform him, but I’m sure I’ll run out of closet space before he runs out of lung power.
The Pittsburgh Press (October 30, 1946)
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – You can look for Basil Rathbone to make a beeline for London any minute. If they ever needed Sherlock Holmes there they do now, with the jewels of titled ladies being stolen in the very shadow of Scotland Yard.
First it was the Duchess of Windsor, then Lady Legh, and now the Marchioness of Hartington, whose “ice” have been stolen by what appears to be the same clever thief. Truly, in London, “The Iceman Cometh.”
It appears to me that if ever England needed our Lend-Lease help it’s right now, to solve these baffling crimes. And I suggest that we send them, post-haste, forty or fifty of those radio detectives who get our children into such a state of nervous collapse every afternoon and evening. Scotland Yard could use their uncanny abilities, and the American radio listeners could use the rest.
The Pittsburgh Press (October 31, 1946)
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – Well, tonight is Halloween, and if custom continues we’re all supposed to be frightened out of our wits by witches and goblins. But I’m afraid Halloween won’t have much punch this year. We’ve all been so thoroughly frightened at the sight of food prices that a goblin at the window will be almost a welcome relief.
Of course, Halloween may be worse in one respect this year – It may increase the housing shortage. It is traditional that certain outbuildings disappear tonight, and what used to be just rowdy fun may now leave whole families without a place to live.
I’d like a report what one progressive community is doing about Halloween. The merchants of Santa Barbara, Cal., have invited all the children to visit the business district between 3 and 6 p.m. and soap up store windows to their hearts’ content. Actually those merchants aren’t taking any risk. Where can the children find soap these days?
The Pittsburgh Press (October 31, 1946)
Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
HOLLYWOOD – Well, it’s certainly a relief to know that with all the problems that confront us, research work along important lines is steadily going on. I read that unseen heroes in the Department of Agriculture are on the verge of an epoch-making discovery: How to produce more durable eggs!
It seems that if the average egg is subjected to four pounds of pressure, it’s only good for an omelet. Science is trying to more than double the pressure necessary to wreck an egg – and I can see a lot of cooks going out on strike in protest against the additional demand on their energy.
Personally, I should think that more durable eggs would naturally come from more durable hens. And, my goodness! If some of the hens I’ve eaten lately are any criterion they must have laid China doorknobs.