Matt Weinstock

March 24, 1958

A Beverly Hills lady named Eve is willing to stipulate that--at the moment at least--it's a very temporary world, particularly for those who aspire to the drama.

A few mornings ago she was visited by a tax assessor who confided after a few minutes' chat that he wasn't regularly a tax assessor. He was really an actor but things had been a little slow.

That afternoon Eve went to the hospital for an operation. She was lying in bed, reading Variety, when a man came into take a blood test.

Seeing what she was reading, he asked if she was in the entertainment business. No, she said, but her husband was.

"I'm an actor," he said, "but things have been a little slow and you know how it is, a fellow has to make a living."

YOU KNOW HOW cold and efficient and merciless Boris Karloff is when he plays the part of a mad scientist or a zombie?

Well, there he was in a market at Sunset and Laurel Canyon boulevards the other day, tugging mildly at a shopping cart telescoped into a whole batch of them, trying in vain to get it loose. A magnificent study in quiet desperation.

Finally, reports writer John D. Weaver, a woman at the check stand finished with her cart and Boris, in great relief, appropriated it to do his shopping.

AN ENGINEER from Northrop Aircraft Inc., gave a talk the other night at which films of the development of the Snark missile were shown.

A spy who was there reports the engineer commented wryly, "You've all read about the trouble the Navy had getting the Vanguard into orbit after so many of them plopped into the sea. Well when we were testing our missile at Cape Canaveral we used to refer to the Atlantic Ocean as 'the Snark-infested waters.' "

AND THIS profound but devious reflection came in a letter Mack Tuesley received from his mother: "Glad the Navy finally got its grapefruit into orbit, although it is a little difficult for me to understand why they went to all that trouble and spent all that money, never knowing what these experiments will discover. I suppose it's a case of not knowing what we can't get along without until we have one. Like my new dishwashing machine."

ONLY IN L.A. -- If anyone has wondered what all those people are looking at in the store window at 837 N. Fairfax Ave., they're gazing at the 7x5-foot oil painting titled "Oscarama," by artist Ted Gilien, whose studio it is. He brought it out in front to commemorate the Academy Awards Wednesday.

It's a brutally satiric study of movie types, men and women, at the "moment of truth" when they receive their statues. And in the background center, just for the heck of it, Ted painted himself and his wife with three-count 'em--three Oscars in front of him.

AT RANDOM -- Heather Lowe, 2, got into the aspirin and was rushed to Santa Monica Emergency Hospital. After a pump job she came out beaming, holding a lollipop and balloon. Turned out these are budgeted items at the hospital, kept on hand for just such cases. Very nice ... Pat Buttram, CBS radio funnyman, bought a new home in Northridge with swimming pool, push-button garage door and other luxuries--but you know what impressed him most? A gold-plated weather vane on the roof ... The Manchester Guardian reports a famous inn near London had a notice in superbly appropriate orthography: "Whet Paynte." Which is about as quaint as you can get ... A reader who is sensitive about such things reports that he heard Gen. Gruenther say on a TV program that "over-all-wise" the Red Cross campaign was doing very well.