SKYLINES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 139, 13 June 1936, Page 13

SKYLINES.

ORACLES OF FEAR. AN "EMERALD" COFFEE QUEEN SLEUTHING FOB. A DOG. (By CHARLES ESTCOURT.) NEW YORK, May 9. Broadway, superstitions as a tea-leaf reader facing a black cat, doesn't like the number three. Accidents happen in threes, the acrobats say. Flops come in threes, the producers say, and death strikes in threes, theatre people say. So when Leslie Adams, a beloved character actor, 49 years old, quit rehearsals to enter a hospital two weeks ago for a minor ailment and died suddenly, Broadway started to wonder. , Then last week young Marilyn Miller's "minor illness" developed to the point where doctors announced she would not live out the day and a shocked Broadway began to look around in fear, speculating in liuslied tones as to who would be next. But Marilyn Miller lived out the day and. the next day and the day after that. The doctors reported her past the critical stage and the main stem uncrossed its lingers. Then Monday afternoon, Edmund Breese, the character actor, only a few days before giving lusty performances in "The Night of January 10," died suddenly. Miss Miller was gaining steadily. Broadway knew it, and was pulling for her with all its gaudy heart. But so fixed is the superstition that there were few along the street who believed the doctors and who thought their favourite dancing star had a chance to leave the hospital alive after two deaths in a row. When Miss Miller died, the fear of threes gained recruits wholesale. New York Neighbours. . Footnote on New York life: Yeliudi Menuhin, the boy violin prodigy, tells me his favourite writing man is Theodore Dreiser, and he's to meet him. Theodore Dreiser tells friends his favourite fiddler is Yeliudi Menuhin, the kind of boy he's like to know. He goes round trying to find a mutual acquaintance who will introduce him. It came as a terrific surprise to both to learn they had been living on the same floor of the same family hotel for years.

Emeralds and Ambition. The Savoy Plaza is a pretty blase sort of place and a man might lead an elephant, complete with diamond-studded tusks and Lady Godfvas, through its lobby without attracting more than a frown of annoyance from the desk clerk. But necks were twisting around in celebrated collars when a tall, svelte, red-head, all in green, sped by on lier way to a private dining room. Tall, svelte red-hejuis are a dime a dozen in this town, but there were two things about this one: (1) She had tricked one her all-green costume with £120,000 worth of emeralds (her own estimate). (2) Her name is Eugenia Clair Smith. Mrs. Smith, heiress to'a couple of tons of coffee money, says she was wearing only the smaller items in her collection and she doesn't know what all tha fuss was for. She is the kind if girl you are always reading about. One tiiU3 yon are reading that she denies being engaged to an ambassador (the late Alexander Moore). Then you read that she denies being engaged to the Marquis de Viliermont. After that you read that she has bought 500 acres of ground and a race track at Delmar, 100 miles south of Hollywood. Finally you read that she denies she is pretty well on the way up to the altar with Francis Lederer, the movie star. Well, you figure, all these activities — these emeralds, ambassadors, marquises, race tracks and movie stars—must add up to something, must mean some single, consuming ambition. They sure do, says Mrs. Smith. "I want to make a transcontinental concert tour._ Why not? Haven't I sung with Nelson Eddy?" Case of the Missing Dog. Then you might spare the time to consider the case of the missing dog. It belongs to Dick Gordon/who has been playing the part of Sherlock Holmes on the radio for the last five years. When it turned up lost, Dick put away his fiddle and his pipe and went out into the streets of Hadlyme, Conn., to take up the trail. One lad told him he had seen it run o,ver by a fast-fiying automobile, and another lad told him he had seen a spry, white-haired man pick it up and carry it off in liis arms. One lad led to another .and, adding them all up together, Sherlock Gordon arrived eventually at a, huge medieval pile of stone assembled into a formidablelooking chateau. Dick thought he must be at the right place —for hadn't the sage of Baker Street always -wound up his cases in gloomy cliatea us ? D.ick got his dog back all right. He was at the gates of the chateau occupied by William Gillette, who has played the part of Sherlock Holmes on the stage for thirty-five years, and what chance lias a dog that has been lost by one Sherlock Holmes and found by another to stay missing? Notes on a Cuff. Lily Pons, the opera star, is taking voice lessons from Bee Palmer, the HotcTia Queen. Lily wants to learn bow to swing it. The Palmer lass lias another pupil, Estelle Taylor, the former Mrs. Jack Dempsey. When Dempsey bit the high road to the altar with Estelle he had to part company with Bee to do it. Pupil and teacher must have a lot to talk about to each other, but the chances are they don't say it. Howard Chandler Christy is among the few southpaw painters. When working he keeps his brush in his left hand and his pipe and a package of matches in his right hand. He's a slow worker, and the editors who are always crying for more of his pictures will tell you he works harder with his right hand lighting that pipe of his than with the left. Starting to-night, Fannie Brice will be appearing in three "Ziegfeld Follies," on stage, screen and radio —and all at once, too. Which makes this mean something or other: The other afternoon she dropped into a doughnut stand for a quick coffee and—- "Look, look," said the lady next to her. "There's Fannie Brice; "No, of course not," said the man next to that lady. "High-class people don't come to a place like this." | So Fannie simply had to turn around ! and say, "I am not high-Klass, but I am I Fannie Brice."—(N.A.N.A.).