People, Oct. 15, 1951

Noting that Rachel (The Sea Around Us) Carson had agreed to do the commentary for the Toscanini-NBC Symphony recording of Debussy’s La Mer, which will be released this fall, the New York Times’s Book Columnist David Dempsey concluded: “This opens up practically unlimited possibilities for authors who would like to do a little music commentating oji the side. Hemingway could take Carmen; Anne Morrow Lindbergh, The Flying Dutchman; Lin Yutang, Chopsticks; etc.”

Hastings William Sackville Russell, twelfth Duke of Bedford, a pamphleteering pacifist and animal lover who once had a private zoo for a hobby and became an expert on the mating habits of spiders, announced from his home in Woburn, England that he has developed a strain of homing parrots. They fly free during the day, he said, but return home at night to eat, sleep and breed.

In Columbus, Ohio’s Gov. Frank J. Lausche duly observed National Newspaper Boy Day by turning out at the crack of dawn, walking a route with 14-year-old Bob Medors.

Arriving in Manhattan to begin her “final” visit and lecture tour, onetime Opera Star Mary Garden announced that after the exhausting ordeal was over she would head for a summer rest in Corsica, “because it’s the one place where you can live with nature. You can bathe any way you want, and no one pays any attention at all.”

Flying the same Beechcraft Bonanza used by the late Bill Odom for his 1949 record hop from Honolulu to Teterboro, N.J., Illinois Congressman Peter F. Mack Jr., 34, left Springfield on the first lap of his round-the-world “Abraham Lincoln Good Will Tour.” The purpose: to visit the people of some 30 nations and convince them that “Americans don’t want war any more than they do.” He expects to be home by January with some results to report.

The Spanish embassy in Washington announced that a special guest would be on hand to help with the annual Columbus Day celebrations: Christopher Columbus, 26, the 17th Duke of Veragua, a lieutenant in the Spanish navy who also holds the honorary rank of Five-Star Admiral of Spain, and a special title granted to the direct descendant of the discoverer, the Admiral of the Ocean Sea.

While their parents, Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh, were busy packing for their trip to Canada and the U.S. (see THE HEMISPHERE), the royal train carrying Princess Anne and Prince Charles home to London from Balmoral stopped at Aberdeen. The young prince decided to have a peek at the outside world, hefted his little sister to the nearest window to share the view, where a photographer got a picture of the wide-eyed little tourists.

Patients & Fortitude

In Colorado Springs, while filming an action scene in The Korean Story, Actor Robert Mitchum leaped into a foxhole, limped out again to report that he had broken three toes on his right foot.

For his pre-London tryout of Othello, Orson Welles chose the city of Newcastle, where he gave his first-night audience a generous combination of Shakespeare and Welles: trick stage changes, recorded sound effects, and some unexpected realism in the final strangling scene. He banged the head of Gudrun Muir, his young Scottish Desdemona, so hard on the wooden base of her deathbed that she nearly passed out. Said she: “I was dazed for some minutes, but Orson’s forceful acting pulled me around.” Noted the Evening Chronicle critic: “. . . At times he seemed to lack the lover’s tenderness, reserving his powers more for the explosive moments.” Welles gave his own last verdict later, at a champagne party for the cast: “I am ambitious. I am great.” Tennessee’s Democratic Representative Pat Sutton, 35, who won a Purple Heart and a Distinguished Service Cross as a Navy “Frogman” in the Pacific, came through another skirmish with flying colors and a swollen right fist. While he was on his way home with a midnight hamburger, a gunman stepped out of an alley near the Capitol. “He told me to ‘stick ’em up,'” said Sutton, “and I just socked him. That’s all. I knocked him down and he was out.”

Debits & Credits

In the gilt courtroom of the Palais de Justice in Paris, a Hindu hotel owner by the name of Hofcep Madath accused Prince Aly Khan of a lowdown horse-trading deal. The four-year-old Farad which Aly sold him turned out to be a wheezer, said the plaintiff, and he wanted his money back. Aly calmly denied the charge. “My horses don’t wheeze,” said he, and pointed out further that the horse had already paid off most of its purchase price ($4,300) in prize money. The court, asking time to consider the case, adjourned for three weeks.

Wine, women, gambling and “lack of moral responsibility,” said F.B.I. Chief J. Edgar Hoover, are causing an alarming increase in bank embezzlements. The increase so far this year: almost 9%, mainly in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York, Michigan and Illinois.

Cinemactor Errol Flynn, a notable fisticuffer on & off the screen, filed an uncharacteristically plaintive suit in the Bahamas Supreme Court. He was standing quietly in a Nassau bar last spring, said Flynn, when wealthy Duncan McMartin, a Canadian gold miner, gave him “a vicious blow on the head.” The bop was worth $224,000, Flynn claimed, because it kept him from earning at least $200,000 in the next six months.

In appreciation for U.S. aid during the famine threat last winter, the government of Marshal Tito offered some gifts in return: a villa with swimming pool and tennis court, which is being used as the American ambassador’s residence in Belgrade ; another building in Zagreb for the U.S. consulate.

For rescuing two of his men under enemy fire, General Matthew B. Ridgway awarded the Silver Star medal to Captain William D. Clark, 26-year-old son of General Mark Clark. Another Silver Star for gallantry in action went to former Lightweight Boxing Champ Lew Jenkins, now a master sergeant in the 2nd Infantry Division.