People, Jan. 29, 1973

Every playwright wants to have at the critics, so when Russia’s Yevgeny Yevtushenko read a New York Times article about his play Under the Skin of the Statue of Liberty with the headline “An Anti-U.S. Play Is a Hit in Moscow,” he saw red. Pointing out that he had toured the U.S. and admired its young people, Apollo 16, jazz and the Grand Canyon, Yevtushenko told the Times: “Neither I nor the director could ever produce an anti-American production, since genuine art cannot be anti-people.” New York magazine added a footnote, gleefully noting that Yevtushenko had lunched with the editors and that “the enemy of capitalism had enlivened the affair by attempting to sell one of his new poems.” —”I have never considered myself a beauty,” Elizabeth Taylor told a Ladies’ Home Journal interviewer, who seemed understandably dubious. Well, then, who is beautiful? “Ava Gardner, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot, Raquel Welch.” Also Madame Jovanka Tito, the wife of Yugoslavia’s President. “She has an inner vitality, an inner glow, great genuine charm and a beautiful smile, but she is an enormous woman -you could sit on her chest.” As to how the Taylor beauty will survive the years, the lady herself had a prediction: “I’ll be a nice, cuddly, gray-haired old thing, or I’ll be fat as a tub of lard, with six chins resting on my bosom.” —After an exhausting day in front of the cameras, the star of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Author Richard Bach’s fugue to flight now being filmed in California, was discovered by a hawk-eyed photographer to be roosting in his own personal chair. Before he could do too much damage, Jonathan was immediately transported back to a local motel, where his room, reported the film company, has a fine view of the ocean-and furniture carefully covered with sheets.

“I never got to work with any of the top leading men,” lamented Bette Davis, 64, hard at work on a television project at MGM studios. Working on a separate project on the same lot was Top Leading Man Jimmy Stewart, 64, so he consoled Bette with an invitation to lunch. “How come you never asked me out when you were one of the most sought-after bachelors in Hollywood?” wondered Bette. With just the right note of shyness, Stewart replied, “I never knew you wanted to go out with me.” Reported Bette later: “It took me 41 years to land even a lunch date with him.”

—Prodigal returned: Timothy Leary, 52, the former Harvard lecturer and proponent of high living (via LSD and other drugs) who sneaked out of a California prison in 1970 and has been trying to find a more tolerant homeland ever since. Tossed out of Afghanistan, Leary was collared by U.S. narcs who hustled him back to Los Angeles. Tagging along was his British traveling companion Joanna Harcourt-Smith, 26, who announced: “I’m here to free him. Love is what it takes.” Said Leary in more practical tones, “I’m going to get a lawyer.”

—After weeks of snarling uncooper-atively at the press-which, of course, was so tantalized it could write of nothing else-Marlene Dietrich finally stopped publicizing her recent television special and went off to see a show. Her date: arthritic Noel Coward, at 73 as acerbic as ever. While such theater folk as Joan Sutherland, Sir John Gielgud, Ethel Merman, Helen Hayes and Tammy Grimes watched a special performance of Oh Coward!-a sparkling sampler of Sir Noel’s works-Marlene confined herself to an occasional scowl and ducked the limelight while her escort received a five-minute standing ovation. As for his reaction to the performance, Coward was clearly delighted. But, he said, with a characteristic sniff: “One doesn’t laugh at one’s own dialogue.”

—”It was very chilly,” reminisced Sir Rudolf Bing, “and Buckingham Palace was unheated, and I knew that I was catching a cold.” The Metropolitan Opera’s retired general manager was recollecting for Xerox Recorded Portraits his impressions of being knighted in 1971. “As I walked toward Queen Elizabeth,” said Bing, “the significance of the occasion suddenly struck me, and I thought of all the historical knighthood ceremonies of the past. She opened her mouth to speak. I could hardly wait for the historic words to emerge. Finally, they came. ‘Have you come over here especially for this?’ she calmly asked. And I said, ‘You’d be surprised, ma’am, but I did.’ And we both laughed.” —”She is very amusing, has a piquant wit and is terribly interested in what I’m doing,” said Artist Richard Banks, who had just painted a portrait of Rose Kennedy, 82. “I never enjoyed painting anybody so much in my life,” he continued. Pleased at being on canvas, Rose then went on the air, allowed herself to be questioned by a Palm Beach, Fla., interviewer who asked her if she had married for love or money. “I married for love,” replied Rose, “but got money as a bonus.”