People: The Strenuous Life

Shopping in Manhattan for some homecoming gifts, Sarah Churchill, 36, actress daughter of Winston, said: “I’d rather like a Mixmaster, one of those marvelous ice-cream machines, and some of those lovely kitchen gadgets that help you wash dishes.”

Before heading to the Mayo Clinic for a slight nose operation, one-man rodeo Bill (“Hopalong Cassidy”) Boyd took time out to go on a Voice of America program, gave Soviet moppets the low-down on redskins and rustlers, along with some Western philosophy: “Never kick a man when he’s down; never shoot a man in the back.”

Concert-touring through Texas, the Metropolitan Opera’s Mezzo-Soprano Risë Stevens, tempted by talk of gushers and wildcat drilling offers, shelled out some money and waited for the oil to pour in. If the well pays off, said she, it will be named Nicky, after her six-year-old son.”If it’s dry, so what? I’ve given plenty of unsuccessful auditions in my life.”

The critics were still wrangling at the top of their voices over Ernest Hemingway. His Across the River and into the Trees (deftly parodied by E. B. White in The New Yorker as Across the Street and into the Grill) had strong popular support; it stood firmly at the top of the bestseller list. There was also moral support from fellow Writer Evelyn Waugh. The critics, wrote Waugh in London’s Catholic weekly, the Tablet, “. . . have been smug, condescending, derisive, some with unconcealed glee, some with an affectation of pity; all are agreed that there is a great failure to celebrate … I believe the truth is that they have detected in him something they find quite unforgivable—Decent Feeling. Behind all the bluster and cursing and fisticuffs he has an elementary sense of chivalry—respect for women, pity for the weak, love of honor—which keeps breaking in. There is a form of high supercilious caddishness which is all the rage nowadays in literary circles. That is what the critics seek in vain in this book, and that is why their complaints are so loud and confident.”

The Bended Knee

In a bustling week for Britain’s royal family, Princess Margaret paid her first official visit to Oxford, planted a tree and declared the Imperial Forestry Institute a going concern. A new car for Princess Elizabeth arrived, a dark green Daimler “consort” saloon model (price: £1,690) complete with radio, air conditioning unit and make-up compartment. Up from Malta came father Philip to join the family in the white-and-gold music room of Buckingham Palace for another christening. Queen Elizabeth, Princess Margarita of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Princess Andrew of Greece (by proxy), Earl Mountbatten and the Hon. Andrew Elphinstone, first cousin of Princess Elizabeth, took their stations as godparents while the Archbishop of York christened Princess Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise of Edinburgh, who looked her 67-day-old best in a satin and lace gown handed down by her great-great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria.

Editor Leonard K. Nicholson of the New Orleans Times-Picayune thought a letter to the editor of the New York Times was in order after he read a recent article which said: “Not a man in the U.S. ever called General George Marshall ‘George’.” Wrote Nicholson: “I have known George Marshall for 53 years . . . roomed with him for the entire four years at V.M.I. . . . kept in contact with him ever since … I call him ‘George’.”

From the New York Society for General Semantics to Britain’s chief U.N. delegate Sir Gladwyn Jebb went a scroll, for his job of “unmasking the propaganda technique of upside-down language” used by Soviet delegates.

The Personal Approach

A Los Angeles jury listened to British Ballerina Brenda Julier’s charges that Cinemactor Sabu (“Elephant Boy”) Dastagir, 26, was the father of her two-year-old daughter, heard the defense sum up: “Sabu is not an ordinary movie star, not an ordinary person. He’s a very lovable boy [but] his interest in life is animals.” The jury voted 9 to 3 to clear Sabu.

In Manhattan on personal business, young ex-King Peter of Yugoslavia insisted that his people were dissatisfied with Tito, added: “I think I am the solution.” But he feared that U.S. aid to Tito “puts off the possibility of my early return.”

After seeing Annie Get Your Gun, North Platte, Neb. Banker William H. McDonald, 89, who once lent Buffalo Bill Cody $4,000 to start his first traveling show, had a word of criticism: Ethel Merman and Betty Hutton were far more lively than the real Annie Oakley. As he remembered her, “she was a nice, quiet little woman.”