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[[newspaper clipping]]
Herb Caen
- Baghdad-by-the-Bay -

Friday Fish-Fry:
TODAY'S POLITICKLE: There are lots of dummies in the local phone book - but only one REAL dummy. On page 233, you'll find a listing on Union St. for Prof. Eustace B. (for Beauregard) Fuddle. The Professor, a small, kindly old gent with flowing hair and thick spectacles, is a ventriloquist's dummy owned by radio's Bruce Sedley. And the reason I'm mentioning all this is that the Professor is about to announce his candidacy for Mayor. There are a lot of dummies in the race, or considering it - but the Professor will be the only REAL dummy. At the rate things are going, he's got my vote already. In a muddle? Vote for Fuddle.
* * *
CAENFETTI: Atty. Melvin Belli hustled East Wed. night with a slight case of fire in the eye - after reading the proofs of Author Robert Wallace's forthcoming book about Belli's courtroom tactics, "Of Life and Limb." Belli wants Wallace's needling slants and jabs removed, or else... The Guardsmen, who've raised dough for their Campership fund in the past by selling tickets for prizes, will come up this year with a gimmick that, they hope, will get around Atty. Gen. Pat Brown's no-lottery warnings. This'll be called a "Skill-o-rama." Tickets will be peddled at a buck apiece, 50 names will be drawn, and these 50 will then compete against each other in various contests of skill, stamina, and intelligence for the grand prizes. See? Game of skill. Hence, no lottery... Mae West and her troupe of guided muscles (including "Mr. America") open March 16 at the Italian Village for two weeks at $12,500 per - highest ever paid in the Columbus Ave. hotspot.
* * * 
ANONYMOUS, INC.: Call-girls are still operating - but on a "don't call us, we'll call you" basis, in case their lines are tapped... The local Mexican colony is gabbling over the fantabulous results of a recent drawing (staged by a Mexican social group) for a new Chevrolet. The winner turned out to be a wetback, living in S'Mateo, who took his prize in cash, instead, and hurried back to Old Mexico, a step ahead of authorities! .... A big-name S.F. couple is getting a divorce because she threatened to push her stepdghter through the window of a skyscraper Russian Hill Apt.... A wealthy down-country gent with a 22-room mansion, acres of land, three cars, chauffeur, etc., committed suicide a few yrs. ago in a rented room in Monterey. The chauffeur, who's still around, is still fond of explaining proudly: "He was a true gentleman. He didn't want the stigma of suicide on his estate."
***
DISTINGUISHED VISITOR: Bill Connor, who, under the pen name of "Cassandra," is the most powerful political columnist in London (on the Mirror), came to the U. S. to interview three personalities only - Adlai Stevenson, Marilyn Monroe, and, in Virginia City, the ineffable Lucius Beebe. He found Stevenson great copy, of course, and had the unique privilege of interviewing Miss Monroe in her bed at the Gotham Hotel in N'York. Then, as he prepared to head West, he found himself, to his considerable amazement, aboard an Air Force plane - provided by the State Dept. And when he landed in Reno - gadzooks! - he was greeted by a guard of honor and a full Colonel who saluted and beamed: "Welcome to the American West, Air Marshal Connor!" Took Connor a half hour and two phone calls to Washington to re-establish his identity as a mere poor but honest journalist. 
***
LOTS OF DOTS: Cosmopolitan Opera's opening night performance, a benefit, netted about $6500 for St. Elizabeth's Infant Shelter (for unwed mothers). . . . Walter Landor, the industrial designer, has bought a rare old home on Union -  a redwood-pillared job designed by the famed old Berkeley architect, Bernard Maybeck. Another notable Maybeck achievement stands only a few blocks away: the crumbling Palace of Fine Arts. . . . Alphonse Batz, maitre d'hotel at the 365, has named his new Tiburon home "Rancho Costa Mucho." . . . Tickets for Fred Waring's Berkeley concert March 5 are going so fast that he'll do a matinee the next day, too. . . . Hastings Law College's monthly faculty luncheon, usually held at the school with milk and bran muffins for all, was staged yesterday at Johnny Kan's in Chinatown - on acct. Dean David Snodgrass likes Chinese chow as much as he's tired of muffins and milk. 
* * *
HISTORIC NOTE: Would you care to know that yesterday marked the 44th anniversary of the first air mail flight? The encyclopedia will give you a date in May, 1918 - but we happen to know it should be Feb. 17, 1911, because we've just had a chat with Fred Wiseman of Berkeley, a retired Standard Oil engineer. On that long ago day, Wiseman, then 24, flew a load of mail from Petaluma to Santa Rosa - and, for good measure, took along a load of newspapers, which he threw out of the plane at intervals. Nowadays, as he looks up at the huge aircraft flying past, only one thought runs through his mind: "I wonder how we were crazy enough to go up in those kites we used to fly. I must have been nuts!"
* * *
QUOTE & UNQUOTE: While the "Blood Alley" movie troupe (John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, et al) were shooting in Stockton, they ate and slept on the "Harbor Queen," the Bay sightseeing ship whose skipper, Capt. Pete Alberigi, has always hated movies and movie stars. However, he came back a changed man. "Y'know," he confessed, "off the screen, that Lauren BAcall ain't half bad lookin'!" . . . Lawrence Ferling, boss of the City Lights Bookshop on Columbus, thinks we should hear about the young No. Beach writer who has sold two articles in the past year - his overcoat and his Harris tweed jacket. . . . How hi the fi dept.: Over 5000 audio nuts are expected at Rudy Samson's hi-fi show in the Mark this wk-end. I'm fraid my old wind-up Victrola - affectionately known as Old Lo-Fo - is rapidly becoming outdated. . . . The new royalty: At the Italian Welfare's Masked Ball in Fugazi Hall tomorrow night, the Queen will wear a mask once worn by Dorothy Kilgallen on "What's My Line?" Ah, to be so close to greatness.

^[[S.F. Examiner Feb. 18 1955.]]
[[/newspaper clipping]]