Word: havana
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Among newsmen in Havana last week, a tall tale or an outright lie drew the same jeering rejoinder: "Even Drew Pearson wouldn't believe that!" The catch phrase was inspired by a recent seven-day vacation in which, Columnist Pearson explained, he planned to "get away from the incessant drumbeat of American politics . . . into the more romantic bongo drumbeat of Cuban politics...
...Drew Pearson thumped the bongo drums for President Fulgencio Batista too fervently. In return, Havana's leading newspapers and magazines last week were busy thumping Pearson. "If Truman called Drew Pearson a liar," declared Mario Kuchilán in Prensa Libre, "he was being generous." Columnist José Pardo Llada, who once hailed Pearson as an "ideal commentator," wrote in Diario National: "Our illustrious friend Drew Pearson has defrauded us." So fulsome was Pearson's praise for the Batista regime that even a Batista booster, Diario National's Luis Manuel Martinez, objected. He called Pearson a "gringo...
Penthouse Reporting. In Havana, Pearson stayed in a luxurious penthouse placed at his disposal by Amadeo Barletta Jr., son of a rich Batista crony. The columnist visited Strongman Batista twice and was steered around town by Batista's American Pressagent Edmund Chester. Pundit Pearson irritated Cuban readers with his naive reporting and prize factual boners, e.g., Pearson wrote that Batista "once threw out Cuba's most hated dictator," although, as every Cuban schoolchild knows, Batista had nothing to do with Dictator Gerardo Machado's ouster in 1933. Quipped El Mundo Columnist Carlos Robreno: If Batista...
...Wouk relaxes with a martini and a long Havana cigar ("They are like lollipops"), plays with his boys Nathaniel, 5, and Joseph, 17 months...
...hate cops and reporters," Frank was once heard to say. He is an admitted friend of Joe Fischetti, who is prominent in what is left of the Capone mob, and he once made himself a lot of trouble by buddying up to Lucky Luciano in Havana -all of which is not to say that he mixes his pleasure with their business; Frankie is too smart for that. On occasion Sinatra, who was trained as a flyweight by his fighter father, has also gone in for slapping people around. He throws pretty frequent crying fits and temper tantrums...