The Waterbury Democrat., 1934-08-14
In New York
By PAUL HARRISON

New k-Meanderings Doris
 Duke and Jimmy Cromwell danc- ing at Joe Zellps while playing hockey from Newport. Helen Wills Moody at the Casino de
 Paree, and looking less moody
 than usual .... Clyde Pangborn planning a flight to Russia. Lila Lee, Nita, Naldi and Pauline Fred
 erick lunching at Sardfs and dis cussing movies of other days .... A theater which calls itself
 ''The Home of Decent Pictupres' also has this announcement .n ! lights: Where Sinners Meet" :. How soon, Broadway wonders, will we see Jean Harlow in "Pollyan- na," Mae West in '"Oyer the Hill, and Bert Lahr as David Copper field"?. Louise Brooks, the I Kansas lass who was coming into prominence during the last days
 of silent pictures, is ballroom
 dancer now....
 A well-known young million
 heir has hired bodyguard tc
 protect him from the bodyguard he recently discharged .... Al Smith. the almost-forgotten man, has deserted his old neighborhood for a house on upper Fifth Ave- nue .... Harry Carr, bartender at the Sulgrave, used to work in Ciro's in London and will tell you how the Prince of Wales used to come in very quietly and sit in a shielded corner. Those were the days when his mother, whenever she heard about him going to 2 night club, would call up Scotland
 Yard and have the place pad
 1884 Hit Play
 You probably couldn't guess Americas favorite play of the mo- ment. It's The Drunkard, or The
 Fallen Saved" which was being produced by P. T. Barnum so years ago. Last year it was re- vived iH Los Angeles, where it's still playing to throngs of villain
 hissers. San Francisco has a pro- duction, too, as do Chicago, Balti- more, New York and exactly "A other. cities. ;. There are no royal ties to worry about; all a producer
 has to do is get a script, few actors, and a place to seat the cus- toners.
 F. Hal Sims likes kibitzers around him when he plays bridge,
 but he thinks it's the worst pos
 sible luck to have one of them touch his chair. ... Dorothy Sims pet superstition is that she'll lose if anyone wishes her luck. The very social Mrs Robert Appleton
 has a butterfly tattooed on her right arm. :. Eileen Gillespie, whose family tilted John Jacob As- tor, and George Hobson are. reviv- l ing an earlier adolescent romance ... For the publicity involved, telegraph companies supply uni formed messenger boys free of
 charge for plays. And now I hear that a Scotch producer is seeking
 a play which will have only mes I senger boys in the cast.
 Ace of Press Agents
 Writing about the worlds first ice-skating contest the other day
 set me to thinking of other weird and wondrous exhibitions staged by promoters of night clubs, amusement parks and the like.
 Most of them have come from the fantastic imagination of one Bert
 Nevins, who almost certainly is a
 chip off the old Barnum family | tree.
 Coney Island first heard of him
 when he staged barkers' contest,
 with an impressive list of judges
 including orators and professors of | English. Then came a kissing
 marathon. That's what I said: a
 kissing marathon. For some reason
 the police and health departments didn't interfere, and fortunately no
 movie censors were among the | spectators. They'd have screamed
 in anguish at the length of the os-
 culatory clinches. The winning
 one lasted 4 hours, 22 minutes. For midtown dance palace,
 Nevins staged sneezing contest
 during hay fever season. and the | department of health unwittingly
 assisted with the publicity. Next
 came a sleeping marathon which
 endured several days. Beetle races
 and turtle races, with the contes-
 tants named for celebrities.
 brought crowds to a Greenwich | Village hot-spot. Once Nevins
 helped introduce a brand of wine
 by hiring a lady glass-eater to en-
 ter a large restaurant, order a bot
 tie of the vintage and bite off the neck of the bottle.
 Nevins' least successful stunt
 was turkey roller-skating race.
 Two husky gobblers were mounted l on skates and ready for the start er's signal when the S. P. c. A. squelched the spectacle and fined the nr"rrrtar. '