FILM STAR WITNESSES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22404, 11 August 1947, Page 5

FILM STAR WITNESSES

DEFENCE INVESTIGATION NEW YORK. July 31. Film stars Lana Turner, Linda Darnell and Ava Gardner have been given top billing among a team of possibly 50 show girls, who will appear at a “command performance” before the U.S. Senate committee, which is investigating the national defence programme. But the committee is not interested in them as actors. It thinks they can tell it something about what has happened to the £14,000,000 which the Government paid to the millionaire sportsman and airman Howard Hughes for war plane orders. Hughes’ eight-engined plyw'ood plane, the showpiece of his production programme, has not yet been flown, and the committee is anxious to know whether all the millions went into planes, or some into publicity. The committee has discovered that Hughes’ right-hand man, "Johnny” Meyers, listed in his income tax returns starlets fees paid to show girls and models as "expenses for entertainment purposes.”

Next to each girl’s name was a sum, ranging from as low as £ls to £ISOO, as fees paid to the girls to appear at Meyers’ banquets, attended by high army, navy and air force officers and administration leaders.

The Republicans are reported to be licking their lips over the investigation, which promises to be spectacular, if not as rewarding as that into other wartime activities.

There is no suggestion that the stars, Lana Turner, Linda Darnell and Ava Gardner, accepted fees, but it is known that they “decorated” Meyers’ lavish entertainments, at a period when their names were romantically linked with Hughes’. Other shows girls named include the starlets, Marie Allison, Marie Windsor. Faith Dumcrgue Dorn, and dozens of New York models, who are alleged to have been recruited to attract big names.

Republican interest in the Hughes investigation has been whetted by the fact that Elliott Roosevelt, son of the late President Roosevelt, was linked with Hughes’ enterprise.