Celebrities in the Sunday News

The News, like the other tabloids, trafficked heavily in celebrity news and gossip

Ed Sullivan covered the New York entertainment scene for the News. He had come over to the paper in 1933 fromThe Graphic, a short-lived competitor, replacing Mark Hellinger, who went to the Mirror and then to Hollywood as a producer. Sullivan was read by more New Yorkers than his chief rival, Hearst columnist Walter Winchell. Sullivan's base of operation was El Morocco while Winchell set up shop at the Stork Club. By 1946 Sullivan was already becoming a showman in his own right. Like Winchell, he had his own radio show and that week’s Variety reported that he was planning to co-produce a series of short films for theatrical distribution. It was audience participation offering. Sullivan would emcee what amounted to screen tests for top Broadway, nitery and radio personalities and audiences would decide who had what it took for Hollywood success.

Sullivan's column on April 14 was devoted to the upcoming June 19^th boxing rematch at Yankee Stadium between challenger Billy Conn and the reigning heavyweight champ Joe Louis. A one-time boxer himself and former sportswriter, he shared personal anecdotes about the two fighters, with a tilt toward the Irishman Conn, managing to drop the names of Barbara Stanwyck and her husband Robert Taylor, Bob Hope, Fred Astaire, Jimmy Durante's oldtime vaudeville partner Lou Clayton, former welterweight champ Jimmy McLarnin, and former Louis’ opponent Primo Carnera along the way.

Hedda Hopper dished the Hollywood gossip for the paper and the syndicate. Amidst her West Coast coverage, she had an item about the Copacabana in NY which was setting aside May 19 as Abbott and Costello night. It was a $50 a-head-dinner benefiting the Lou Costello Jr. Foundation Fund. [The comedian’s infant son had drowned in the family swimming pool in 1943 just before Costello was set to do his comeback radio broadcast after his own recovery from rheumatic fever. He subsequently set up a foundation in his son’s honor to help underprivileged kids.] Hopper also reported that some of the rooms from the former Cornelius Vanderbilt mansion on Fifth Avenue had been imported to Hollywood to be used in “The Bachelor’s Daughter.” Among her Hollywood items was the denial by twenty-year-old actress Angela Lansbury’s of the rumor that she was splitting with her husband, 36-year-old actor Dick Cromwell. She had moved in with her mother, she said, because both she and her husband were suffering from the flu. [The couple subsequently divorced but remained friends. In recent years, Lansbury revealed that she had discovered her husband was bisexual.] The lead column item was about the upcoming production of “Sea of Grass,” to star Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Harry Carey was returning to the screen in the movie after a two-year absence.Elia Kazan was directing.

The paper reported on April 14 that Lana Turner and her two-year old daughter Cheryl had flown to New York from Los Angeles on a TWA Constellation accompanied by Lana’s latest beau, ABC executive Charles P. Jaeger, who was traveling incognito. The couple had been photographed nightclubbing together in both cities but Jaeger denied a serious involvement. Debonair Hollywood Frenchman Charles Boyer was also in town with his wife and told the News that they had been theatergoing, taking in "State of the Union," "Born Yesterday" and "The Glass Menagerie ” on Broadway.

Veteran celebrity journalist Florabel Muir reported from Hollywood that "Mr. Shirley Temple," the 24 year-old former Air Force sergeant John Agar, had signed an acting contract with David Selznick. Agar had met the former child star, now approaching her 18th birthday, at a swimming party given by comic actress ZaSu Pitts. They had been married since September. According to Muir, Selznick had secretly screen tested the young man without Shirley’s knowledge. The actress was also under contract to Selznick.

Broadway playwright and Hollywood screenwriter Frederick H. Hatton, 66, died in a nursing home in Illinois. He and his late wife Fanny had written and adapted a number of stage and screen plays together back in the teens and twenties.

Photos of alluring young starlets was a staple of the News. On this day Frances Rafferty and Rosemary LaPlanche drew the honor. Twenty-three year old actress and pin-up girl Rafferty, who was shown "cooling off" in a bathing suit, had filed for divorce from John E. Harlan, the recently discharged Army major she had married in 1944. [Rafferty mostly appeared in B-movies in the 1940s. Boomers might remember her from the popular 1950s TV series “December Bride.”] Rafferty could be seen that week at some neighborhood houses in "She Went to the Races," the second feature paired with "Scarlet Street," Rosemary LaPlanche, Miss America 1941, pictured relaxing demurely at home, had her “first real chance” at Hollywood stardom with a lead role in "The Devil Bat's Daughter," according to the News. Up to now she had only had bit parts. [LaPlanche never made it big in Hollywood. She is best remembered for having won her title the year after being named first runner up, leading Miss America to ban competing more than once.)

Penny Singleton, star of the "Blondie" movies and radio series based on the popular comic strip. was on the cover of the Coloroto photo magazine supplement. A short biographical feature was in the main section of the paper.