Dorothy's Parlay

To dynamic Mrs. Dorothy Christie, wife of a Montreal ski maker, most women's war work is "a lot of hooey." Embarked on a hooeyless project of her own design, she is now collecting the last of a flood of dimes, quarters and dollars from other Canadian women named Dorothy, which should in a week or so pay for a Spitfire for the R.A.F.

How Dorothy Christie parlayed a $25 secondhand evening wrap into a $22,500 fighter plane is one of the breeziest inspirations of World War II. The wrap, which, along with other finery and furbelows, Mrs. Christie had forsworn for the war's duration, was sold to an American friend last October. The $25 she got went to print cards that said: "Is your name Dorothy? If so, rally around and help buy a Spitfire for Britain."* The cards, in turn, went to every Dorothy in the Dominion that she and her friends could think of.

As the money began rolling in, Organizer Dorothy launched a series of "galloping tea parties,'' at which Dorothies drank, paid, went forth chain-letter fashion to brew more tea for more Dorothies. To date, the Provinces have been Blitz-teaed some 20,000 times, always with a Dorothy as hostess, though often with other-named guests.

Other Dorothy activities have included rummage sales, all-Dorothy musicales, Simonizing cars, auctioning books. In Vancouver, Dorothies auctioned for $151 one of Dorothy Lamour's inexhaustible supply of sarongs, hoped to get an autographed article from Dorothy Thompson. In Almonte, Ont. a man trying on a new pair of shoes had his old shoes snatched and auctioned by ebullient Dorothies.

* Not the first Dorothy to have designs on a Spitfire is Dorothy Christie. Though she did not know it, there was a Dorothy Spitfire Fund in Britain last summer (TIME, Sept. 2).

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