People, Sep. 16, 1957

Names make news. Last week these names made this news:

Still young enough at 33 to play the juvenile, Cinemactor Marlon Brando, no longer a delinquent, tried to explain to New York Herald Tribune Columnist Joe Hyams why he has taken the marbles out of his mouth, untilted his pelvis and abandoned the T-shirt and sneakers as evening dress: “I’ve found you have to make a choice of whether you want to be a member of organized society or not. If so, you must make certain concessions. For example, in my business I am obliged to be cooperative, which includes talking to people. It’s so easy to listen to the sound of your own voice—like now. But I know that under different circumstances you wouldn’t listen to me. You’d be talking to me with a nice, healthy ‘Drop dead’ mixed in with the conversation here and there.” Said Hyams: “Drop dead.” Replied Brando: “Turn blue.”

In no mood for a last hurrah, Boston’s former mayor and silver-voiced Prince of Blarney, James M. Curley, 82, was no sooner sworn in as a member of the Massachusetts Labor Relations Commission than he learned that his son George, 38, once Boston director of public celebrations, had surrendered to Morris County, N.J. police, charged with impairing the morals of two male minors.

Ready to enter Cheam School as one of twelve new boys in a student body of 90, Prince Charles, 8, heir apparent to the British throne, will get caned in the “customary place” if he doesn’t behave, be limited to 35¢ a week spending money and will sleep with six or seven boys his own age in an unheated dormitory on a wooden, springless bed covered with a thin mattress. Said Queen Elizabeth II to her son when she saw the bed: “You won’t be able to bounce on that.”

Frank Sinatra, who once had to croon to make them swoon, arrived in Nice to work on his new movie, Kings Go Forth, was recognized at the airport with the ecstatic cry, “C’est Frankie!”, engulfed, hand-passed over a tidal wave of hysterical women to a waiting Cadillac while Actress Linda Christian, there to meet him, was left behind. Tremoloed a shaken Frankie: “It was rough, but it was fun.”

Displaying her beauty (green eyes, honey blonde hair and 35-25-36), her talent (at the Hammond organ) and her intelligence (Q.: “Is it proper for a lady to propose marriage?” A.: “Heavens, no! That is the man’s role”), Marilyn Elaine Van Derbur, 20, of Denver was named Miss America of 1958, a title which will enable her to make in the next year up to $85,000.

The literary event of the week took place in Paris, where Dans un Mois, Dans un An (In a Month, In a Year), the third novel in four years by Franchise (Bonjour, Tristesse) Sagan, 22, appeared, to the tune of a phenomenal first printing of 200,000 copies. Dedicated to Publisher Guy Schoeller, mid-fortyish, the man she has announced she will marry next winter, the book proved to be another bedtime story, no longer in the first person singular like the previous two, but still very personal. Its characters hop from boredom to boudoir and back again, and when asked what it all means, the young heroine says not to ask—and quotes Macbeth: “It will make us mad.”

Circling the many-colored globe where their joint problems lie, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff posed for their first group picture since General Nathan Twining took over as chairman from Admiral Arthur Radford.

Having fled from the U.S. to Mexico, then from Mexico to Czechoslovakia on Paraguayan passports, wealthy Alfred K. Stern, 59, and his wife Martha Dodd Stern, 48, let a Prague press conference know they were in no hurry to return to the U.S. and explain their activities as professional Communist spies, announced that they would soon visit East Germany, Bulgaria, Communist China. Safe (so far) behind the Iron Curtain, the daughter of onetime (1933-37) U.S. Ambassador to Germany William E. Dodd, once famed for painting the town red at home and abroad, painted a picture of her own country with the same color, declared that “all progressive people” in the U.S. have been “liquidated” or are under surveillance by the Government.

In Dallas, French Fashion Designer Gabrielle (“Coco”) Chanel, 74, received the Neiman-Marcus Golden Anniversary Award as “the great innovator who emancipated the feminine silhouette,” transforming it from undulating, feminine curves to flapper angularities with emphasis on comfort, jersey, pearls, the triangular scarf, the pleated skirt, shawls, colored gloves for night parties, and cloche hats for that come-hither look —and Chanel No. 5 for that come-hither smell. In a baffling statement of first principles, the woman who banished the waistline, eliminated hips and deflated the bosom, announced: “The most important thing is to look feminine.” Confusing the issue still more, Coco added, “The only line is the straight line.”