People: Nov. 24, 1961

As he deplaned at New York’s Idlewild Airport for a U.S. visit, Aleksei Adzhubei, 37, a pudgy, fair-haired carbon of Father-in-Law Nikita Khrushchev, was pointedly asked by a U.S. newsman: “As editor of Izvestia, are you responsible for the policies of the paper and its editorial content?” The Red editor’s first reaction was a reflex affirmative. His second, delivered in the only English he used during the interview: “Maybe.”

Widely known for his interpretations of other writers—his works include a graceful translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a critique of Amy Lowell and her times, and A History of American Poetry—Litterateur Horace Gregory, 63, last week was honored for his own urbane verse with the 1961 fellowship of the Academy of American Poets. A fulltime writer since a 1960 illness ended his 26-year teaching career at New York’s Sarah Lawrence College, the Milwaukee-born poet reported “surprise” at his selection by a panel of other poets, including W. H. Auden and Marianne Moore. On the $5,000 that goes with the award, Gregory offered no direct comment, but in Medusa in Cramercy Park and Other Poems, his sixth verse collection, which was published last week, he wrote:

It is not money, but power that lives in money

That heats the blood and turns the soul to ashes,

Freezes the heart, and changes life to clay,

Invisible spirit against the human spirit.

To celebrate his first birthday (Nov. 25), the White House lifted the swaddling curtain for the first fullface portrait of John F. Kennedy Jr. since his christening, revealed that, although the picture shows him chomping on a toy rooster, a hand-me-down steam engine from Sister Caroline is actually his favorite possession. Other vital statistics cleared for release: weight—23 lbs.; height—30 in.; vocabulary—”Da-da, Mama and other noises.”

After a publicity-winning preview sale to her perennial Palm Beach hostess, Rose Kennedy, chic Helene Arpels, fiftyish, a regular titlist in the world’s ten-best-dressed-women stakes, opened to the public a gemlike boutique in Manhattan’s St. Regis Hotel. Located just two blocks from where her estranged husband, Louis Arpels of Van Cleef & Arpels, traffics in tiaras, the new establishment stocks such exotica as 17th century quill pens with ballpoint nibs ($13.45) and square-toed velvet bedroom slippers for men ($24). Cooed Mme. Arpels, gesturing at the merchandise with a ring-finger diamond that would choke a Gabor: “I’m so amused with my new toy.”

Unmoved by the defendant’s recollection that “I drove various types of vehicles from Alamein to Berlin with no trouble to anyone except the Germans,” a London court hit Field Marshal Lord Montgomery, 74, with a $28 fine for steering his Daimler the wrong way on a one-way street—and into another car.

After retiring from the Oxford rugby team following his marriage last July, Rhodes Scholar Lieut. Pete Dawkins, 23, was cajoled into rejoining the floundering squad at midseason, plunged like a panther into the first “bad show” of his three years in England. Smarting from a series of thumping tackles by an exuberant opponent, West Point’s 1958 All-America halfback abandoned pursuit of the ball for pursuit of his tormentor, and vengefully set about choking the aggressiveness out of him. But though spectators decorously booed Dawkins’ unsportsmanlike lapse, there was wide rejoicing over the post-match shandy (a concoction of beer and lemonade) that the hitherto irreproachable Yank had at last displayed some evidence of human frailty.

A year that saw the hip little world of Author Norman (The Naked and the Dead) Mailer, 38, go clamorously smash —from last November’s stabbing of his wife to his ignominious ouster from a February poetry reading for an alleged “raw recital of filth”—was ending amid the sweet smell of vindication. A Manhattan judge who likes to “gamble on human beings” last week gambled on a suspended sentence for confessed Spouse-Assaulter Mailer. Simultaneously, Mailer’s Manhattan publisher, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, was venturing a different sort of risk: release of the first collection of Mailer’s scatological verse, under the title Deaths for the Ladies and Other Disasters.

From the best-connected little boy in Hollywood’s Rat Pack came a starry-eyed tribute to Patrol Leader Frank Sinatra, 43. After intoning a scoutlike litany of Sinatra’s virtues—”energy, imagination, kindness, thoughtfulness, awareness”— Presidential Brother-in-Law Peter Lawford, 36, summed up: “Frank’s a giant, a fantastic human. I don’t want to sound phony, but I consider it a privilege to live in the same era Frank’s in. I do”

The World Champion New York Yankees’ strong, silent Roger Maris, 27, who outpoled Teammate Mickey Mantle in home runs, 61-54, during this year’s race with the Ruthian record, last week outpolled him among the baseball press, 202-198, to become the American League’s most valuable player for the second consecutive year (previous back-to-back winners: Jimmy Foxx, Hal Newhouser, Yogi Berra and Mantle).

Eighteen months after she dropped her 19-year option on ex-Husband Desi Arnaz (but retained half interest in their $20 million Desilu Productions empire), carrot-crested Comedienne Lucille Ball, 50, decided on a second marriage. Her new choice: Bronx-born Gary Morton, 44, a tall, dark nightclub comic whom she met over pizza on a blind date a year ago. Said Lucy, busily making arrangements for a Bergdorf Goodman trousseau, the services of the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, and an Acapulco honeymoon: “I’m looking forward to a nice quiet life.”

Bent on becoming a ranking European ski star, Karim Ago Khan, 24, scored a diplomatic sitzmark while working out with the Austrian national squad near Salzburg. Racing down a slalom run, the generally sobersided Karim veered off the marked course and bowled over an Austrian photographer who had chosen to ignore the Aga’s refusal to permit pictures. When the collision was untangled, the victim took his mangled Minolta and gashed ski boot to the local police station, charging reckless skiing. But before a damage suit could be prosecuted, the spiritual leader of 20 million Ismali Moslems lammed out of town.

With nary a negative peep from the Soviet bloc, the United Nations honored the wishes of the Ford Foundation (which donated the building) by dedicating its new $6,200,000 glass-and-marble library to the late Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold. Eulogized Acting U.N. Secretary-General U Thant of Burma: “Dag Hammarskjold was a man of learning and a poet of the breed for whom books and libraries are necessary delights.”

For Oregon’s indefatigable Maurine Neuberger, 53, the wheel came a somber circle. Her husband and predecessor as Oregon’s junior Democratic Senator, Richard Neuberger, in 1959 reported himself cured of cancer only to die the following year of a stroke. Last week Maurine, who had not been herself since a recent swing through Africa, was operated on in Portland for removal of an intestinal growth. Though preliminary biopsy revealed “low-grade malignant changes,” her condition at week’s end was reportedly “good.”

Still smarting from a series of ill-starred political ventures topped off by his self-announced candidacy for the 1960 Republican vice-presidential nomination, Banker-Lawyer Philip Willkie, 41, son of the late Wendell Willkie, had no patience left for family troubles. With his wife’s divorce litigation dragging into its sixth month, Willkie countered with a $1,000,000 suit against his in-laws for alienation of Mrs. Willkie’s affections. Willkie’s father-in-law: Millionaire Minneapolis Grain Man Peavy Heffelfinger, 64, nephew of famed 1890s Yale Guard “Pudge” Heffelfinger and onetime finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.

At a Boston conclave of far-out right-wingers, rampaging Columnist-Commentator Fulton Lewis Jr., 58, won wild applause by repudiating the moderation of the John Birch Society in merely urging the impeachment of Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. Foamed Lewis: “I would lynch Earl Warren.”