... WE TAKE OFF-' OUR HAT TO- THAT vivid impersonator FLORENCE DESMOND irresistibly suggests Manet's 44 Barmaid en grande tenue as she shakes a cocktail for a friend while wearing Queen Alexandra's 1904 Court gown. This was prior to the auction of the dress in aid of Mrs. Churchill's Aid to Russia Fund a gift from Jack Hylton. The band leader bought the dress two years ago in aid of the Red Cross, ...

... . he marriage of MISS ESTELLE HORSLEY-CARR, randdaughter of the 9th Lord Belhaven and tenton, to LIEUT. GERALD HERBERT CROSS, jn of Mr. C. N. Cross, of British Columbia, took place in Edinburgh. MISS THELMA LEIGHTON SEAGER, W.R.N.S., is a daughter of Sir Lcighton Seager, President of the Chamber of Shipping of the United Kingdom and an ex- High Sheriff of Monmouthshire. LADY SEAGER, wife of ...

... HAMLET, AT THE HAYMARKET I THEATRE, WITH JOHN GIELGUD AND PEGGY ASHCROFT. 44 T TAMLET alternates with 44 The Circle and Congreve's 44 Love for Love, at the Haymarket, where John Gielgud and his company recently opened their season. 44 A Midsummer Night's Dream and Webster's masterpiece, 44 The Duchess of Malfi, are to be added to the repertory in the New Year. 44 Hamlet is directed by ...

... SYDNEY'S PRETTIEST GIRL? BOB HOPE'S CHOICE-- AND RIVALS. Right When Bob Hope visited Australia he conferred the title of the jirettiest girl in Sydney on twenty- year-old BETTY DAWES, of Point Piper. Netty, however has rivals. This is twenty -year-old MAIDIE HANN, of BeUevue ill. She's blonde and blue-eyed, works in her mother* s butcher* s shop and does some commercial modelling. Then there ...

... MAESTRO AT HOME IN NEW YORK ARTURO TOSCANINI. WHEN the small and brilliant conductor, ARTURO TOSCANINI, stands before a symphony orchestra he is a furious perfectionist who makes men play music as they play it for no other man. Born at Parma, Italy, in March 1867, the maestro began studying music at the age of nine at the Parma Conservatory of Music. At nineteen* he conducted a performance ...

... TINY LITTLE PROPS MAKE HUGE-SCALE HAVOC SCENES I I THE poignant scenes of war havoc in the official films are, of course, the real thing, shots taken by units with the fighting forces, but iifl many other instances sequences of dramatic effect arc obtained by the skilful use of tiny models, and miniature props. For example, thesfl photographs show the shooting of a scene for the M.-G.-M. film ...

... Andy Hardy's house on Ames Avenue painted with trompe Toeil meticulousness on a canvas backdrop. M.-G.-M. also has a three-dimensional exterior of Ames Avenue. ...

... . PHOTOGRAPH BY KANOVA. GENERAL JOSEPH PIERRE KOENIG, D.S.O., is best remembered for his heroic defence of Bir Hacheim in Libya 1942 at the head of a small French garrison, chiefly of Parisians and Bretons. For sixteen days the stronghold teas held against incessant dive-bombing attacks, and assaults by picked German and Italian troops, an epic resistance which restored French military ...

... . ONE of the most ingenious of this war's inventions was made by MR. DONALD COLEMAN BAILEY, inventor of the Bailey bridge to carry the heaviest of modern armoured vehicles over rivers and chasms. The Bailey Bridge fits together like a giant jigsaw puzzle, only one steel pin being needed to lock each joint securely to the next. It is built up first on rollers, and then each successive span is ...

... WE TAKE OFF OUR HAT TO- G. B. Sv for making an Eishty^Eishth Birthday Gift of his Home to the National Trust. PHOTOGRAPH BY KARSH OF OTTAWA. Our Grand Old Socialist man of letters, MR. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, reversed the usual procedure when, on July 26, his eighty-eighth birthday, he presented his house at Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, to the nation as a literary, shrine. The property ...

... c (Pin-up J ^rio. 6 (Jean dzParler In answer to special requests from the Forces, tee heretcith resume our Pin- Up Girls series. JEAN PARKER, who will he seen in the new Universal Picture Dead Men's Eyes, is one of the fete actresses in Hollywood who didn't want to go on the films! One of the most beautiful schoolgirls, posed in a stvim-suit for a Tenth Olympiad Poster, she went to a picnic ...

... . As Home Secretary and Minister of Home Security MR. HERBERT MORRISON is the Minister chiefly concerned with the problems of protection from Flying Bomb attack and evacuation from danger areas. When he toured bombed sites last week- he spoke about the efficacy of London s shelter arrangements, though he agrees that the attacks are no picnic He voiced the general opinion by his high praise of ...