Phone Troubles

None of that, it seemed, mattered.

HAD YOUR CHRISTMAS suggestion today?  Tiffany has an ad in the New Yorker for a $77,000 emerald and diamond necklace, Cartier one plugging a $19,800 bracelet . . . People passing the Tishman Building, under construction at Wilshire and Flower, do a double-take.  Halfway up, Christmas figures, pixie types, seem to be hanging on precariously . . . The giant Christmas tree in front of Columbia Square is painted green — over the true green foliage.

    AFFLUENTREE
Prolific the blossoms
The fruit and the sweet,
But lacking the leaves
of propriety,
The money tree grows
And secretly knows
Why it also produces
anxiety.
RAY SOUTHWORTH

TO DRAMATIZE the Christmas campaign for CARE, Arnold Bauer’s Hollywood High School art department recently built an 8-foot Disney-like shoe.  The idea was that CARE has so many hungry refugee children to feed it  doesn’t know what to do unless people help.  But when the shoe was finished it was found it wouldn’t go through the school doors.  So a CARE photographer had to go to the school to take publicity pictures.

THIS IS World Refugee Year, proclaimed by the U.S., but not enough people know it or appreciate the magnitude of the problem, the Rev. Dr.Elfam Rees said while in L.A. this week.

There are 15 million refugees in the world today for whom Dr. Rees, a charming Welshman, feels responsible, but he sees no complete solution to the problem in our life time.  Big trouble spots — Korea, India,Hong Kong, Palestine.

“They know it’s WRY and they think it’s going to be their year but when the year ends in July they’re going to find out that it wasn’t,” he said, “and I’m the one who has to go back to the camps and tell them why — apathy.”

ONLY IN HOLLYWOOD — A young man who rammed NBC publicist Kay Mulvihill’s car from the rear on Vine St. phoned later — and asked for a date.

FOOTNOTES — A notice was posted on the bulletin board of a large organization announcing the time the Red Cross chest X-ray mobile unit would be there.  To which some joker added, “The inside story of the Community Chest.  Please remove pens, pins and pistols” . . . You know what the marines at Camp Pendleton call drill? Interpretive marching, reports Ted Sell, who used to be one himself . . . Joe Hillegass’ parakeet Tony is a borracho, too, but discriminating.  He will drink only Scotch.  But he doesn’t do an el foldo as less stern birds might.  He merely flies sideways . . . The payola nervousness is everywhere.  A chain grocery store urges customers not to give gifts to the hired hands.