People: Mar. 13, 1964

It was all a big joke, yuk, yuk. The boy needed a little publicity, and we were just giving him a hand. So said the three defendants who were accused of kidnaping Frank Sinatra Jr. Said the jury, after only 6 hrs. 53 min. of deliberation: guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. Six counts for two, five for the other, and the judge was obviously prepared for the verdict. One of the kidnapers managed to wangle a delay in sentencing, but the other two got the book and the bibliography both: life imprisonment, plus 75 years. Yuk, yuk.

Critics cavil that not enough countries are represented at the New York World’s Fair. Such critics, said Robert Moses, 75, offhandedly plucking a barb from the bulrushes, wonder why there is no exhibit from such as “the Sultan of Kuwait with his bottomless oil, Cadillacs, harems, heat, sand flies and camel dung.” That kind of joke is as old as Moses, but tiny Kuwait was not amused. “Grossly unfactual references,” said Talat Al-Ghoussein, Kuwait’s Ambassador to the U.S., in a stiff note to the Fair president. Oil there is, to be sure. But as an educated man, Mr. Moses should know that “a) Kuwait does not have a sultan but an emir; b) the emir does not own Cadillacs; c) the emir does not have any harem, and d) Kuwait does not have sand flies and camel dung.”

He, nervously: “What are you going to say?” She, coyly: “Well, you haven’t written anything for me yet.” He, mutteringly: “I can tell she’s going to upstage me.” And right he was. Rising at a dinner of Chicago’s Notre Dame Club to accept their “Woman of the Year” award, Dolores Hope introduced her husband of 30 years: “Well, I’ve either got to use Bob’s idiot cards or give you the idiot himself. Bob, you’re on.” The comic valiantly flip-quipped his way through 30 minutes (the one time he was angry with his wife: “The morning I came downstairs and found her sitting in my spotlight”), but the night belonged to Dolores. Said a telegram to the club from the Hopes’ four adopted children: “Thank you for recognizing what we have known all along.” Bob just beamed. “I feel like Prince Philip,” he said.

Assessing the scientific problems facing the Johnson Administration, International Science and Technology was not overly inspired by President Johnson’s new scientific adviser. “Donald Hornig of Princeton is a virtual stranger on the Washington scene,” sniffed the monthly magazine. That’s a dirty fib, piped up one who thought he ought to know. Said Chris Hornig, 10, in a fiery, pencil-written letter-to-the-editor: “In a past issue you said that Donald Hornig was a virtual stranger to Washington. My father has served for three Presidents, and is in Washington so much that by now he is a virtual stranger to me.”

It was a little like poker. Mama Dodge, 93, opened with a $10,441,289.42 suit against her late son’s estate, claiming he owed her that much. And now Horace’s widow, Gregg Sherwood Dodge, 40, says it’s her deal, and she is raising the ante as well. But since Horace was worth only $2,500,000, Gregg is going after her mother-in-law instead. Mama Dodge (worth $65 million) did “wilfully and maliciously undertake” to destroy her son’s fifth marriage, says Gregg, who wants $11 million plus court costs and attorney fees for the way that undertaking made her Dodge dodge.

“Onto your bellies, legs straight, arms out from your sides. Now pick ’em up. And down. And up. And down. And up. Hold ’em up there. Hold ’em. Hold ’em. Hold ’em. And down.” That sort of regimen is for the boys trying to make the squad, but the St. Louis Cardinals’ newest vice president thought it would be good to get down in the dirt with the troops at the St. Petersburg, Fla., training camp. Besides, Stanley Frank Musial, 43, is President Johnson’s physical-fitness director. He has an image to maintain. He hasn’t varied ten pounds in weight since he started in major-league baseball 26 years ago.

Seventy years ago Konrad Adenauer went to the head of the class, and he has stayed there ever since. Of the 29 Adenauers descended from the sly old political fox, none has scored so well in high school as did der Alte. None, that is, until Konrad Adenauer III, 19. On the German grade scale, which runs from 1 down to 6, Grandfather Konrad scored a 1 in singing, a 3 in sports and a 2 in everything else. That rates as “outstanding.” But the eldest son of his eldest son racked up an astounding 1 in all subjects except sports. And even there he beat out his forebear, with a 2-to-3. All that is hard enough to take, but the dethroned family brain may also find his speechmaking outdone. Konrad III is class valedictorian.

Ill lay: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, 84, in Washington, D.C.’s Walter Reed Army Hospital after removal of his gall bladder, which was not cancerous as feared; Jazzman Louis Armstrong, 63, in Manhattan’s Beth Israel Hospital for treatment of phlebitis of the left leg; Journalist-Author Randolph Churchill, 52, who is currently editing his father’s papers, in London’s Brompton Hospital to have an exploratory operation on his left lung; Longtime L.B.J. Aide George Reedy, 46, in Washington, D.C.’s Doctors Hospital to lose some of his 250 lbs. to offset an abuilding gall-bladder condition. So far he has lost 20, but one day he gained a half-pound reading a book called The Great Hunger. Said he: “Learning about how my ancestors fared during the Irish potato famine made my thousand calories seem big.”