Word: philadelphia
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Radio Comic Fred Allen, having hugely annoyed Philadelphia's Chamber of Commerce by wisecracking about the smallness of a Philadelphia hotel room he once put up in (TIME, Dec. 18), tried to make amends by explaining that times had changed; but that old room, said he, "was so small it had a digest phone book, the calendar on the wall showed only half a day, the ceiling was so low that if you ordered a three-decker sandwich, the waiter brought one deck at a time...
Last week there was a party in Mrs. Rice's forbidden room. The room had been moved to Philadelphia's Museum of Art (to which Mrs. Rice willed it), but the goings-on might well have furrowed Mrs. Rice's brow. For 500 socialites crowded in among the priceless bric-a-brac, to munch chicken a la king and sip punch. No damage was done. But ordinary visitors will not be allowed to scuff across the room's Savonnerie carpet, made for Louis XIV, or sit in its superbly upholstered chairs. From behind ropes the public...
Appropriate was it that Mrs. Rice's most prized possession should go to Philadelphia. From Philadelphians she inherited two fortunes, totaling some $60,000,000-one from her father, Oilman William L. Elkins, the other from her first husband, George D. Widener, who with her elder son went down with the Titanic in 1912. In memory of her son she gave the Widener Memorial Library to Harvard. At its dedication in 1915 she met Explorer Rice, himself a millionaire. Four months later they were married...
Though the Philadelphia Museum of Art welcomed Mrs. Rice's drawing room, it would welcome still more warmly a gift from her brother-in-law, Joseph Early Widener. A leathery, meticulous Philadelphia patrician, Joe Widener inherited his father's great art collection, has made it even greater by ruthless pruning. In Lynnewood Hall, Widener's vast Georgian mansion at Elkins Park, Pa., now hang 105 paintings-all good, some masterpieces...
...Widener has long let it be known he would leave his collection to the public. It had always been assumed that the Philadelphia Museum of Art would get it. But this autumn the art world has buzzed with a rumor that the Widener art would go instead to the Mellon-endowed National Gallery of Art, now abuilding in Washington. Joe Widener has kept...