IN MOVIELAND, a Phi Beta Kappa key is about as useful as a recommendation from a high school dramatics coach, Franchot Tone wears the key from Cornell. As Earnest Sharpe, Actor Erik Rhodes earned one at the University of Oklahoma. Though he hasn't yet attained the eminence of Brother Tone, Erik Rhodes works just as steadily in pictures and in due time will make almost as much money. You saw him first as the dapper, sputtering foreigner in the Astaire Rogers film, Gay Divorce. He stayed in Hollywood to play in top Hat. New he is likely to be in any RKO Radio motion picture you happen to sec.

At Oklahoma, Erik Rhodes, or Earnest Sharpe '27, was a singer who could really put over Moonlight and Roses. Bing Crosby and Fred Mac Murray were singers at their colleges, too; they left without taking degrees. Rhodes went out with a Chautauqua company his senior year, but he finished his work b correspondence and won the Phi Bete key.

Living "Tower of Babel"

EAST in East and West is West, but Jack Armstrong, the All-American boy who delights young fry from coast to coast on the an gets in and out of trouble in the East as well as in the West His adventures know no boundaries. American Racketeers or Chinese smugglers, all are his meat, For that reason another Phi Beta Kappa finds work in radio. She is Betty Ito, diminutive Chicagoan who earned her key at the University of Chicago. Betty is Japanese by ancestry, American by birth, but she plays a Chinese role in Jack Aumstrong's show.

To the ordinary youngster, a Chinese accent is the same as a Japanese accent, but Miss Ito, being a Phi Beta Kappa, strives to keep her role Chinese. She is also attempting to team Japanese better while serving as secretary to a professor of Getman at the University of Chicago. Herivory tower of scholarship is a Tower of Babel.