People, Nov. 14, 1960

Back in his adopted Himalaya skyscrapers for a closer look at the evasive Abominable Snowman, New Zealand’s Sir Edmund Hillary, co-conqueror of Mount Everest in 1953, decided to extend the expedition. Reason: having earlier discovered some strange pawprints at high altitudes in the snow, Sir Edmund was almost ready to give up the hunt when, according to a letter just received by the expedition’s sponsor (Chicago’s Field Enterprises Educational Corp.). he happened upon a bearlike skin that his Sherpa guides —who may be con men of the highest-altitude order—swore to be the hide of a large Snowman. Wrote Mountaineer Hillary: ”We regard it as a particularly significant exhibit.” Australia’s hearty Prime Minister Robert Menzies has often been upbraided and spoofed by Down Under fashion arbiters for his addiction to wide-lapeled, double-breasted suits. Last week he broke down and accepted a gift from the Australian Wool Bureau. Handsomely got up in his new single-breasted ensemble, Menzies neatly excused his past preference for all wool and a yard wide: “I always thought I was helping the wool industry by wearing slightly more material than most people.”

Close in the wake of the birth of a son to her royal ex-husband, Iran’s former Queen Soraya, 28 and childless, turned up in Las Vegas in the unlikely company of TV’s Wyatt Earping Actor Hugh O’Brian, 33. Heading for the gaming tables, Soraya professed herself a greenhorn at the deceptively simple game of blackjack. Soon relieved of about $40 by his beautiful visitor, Soraya’s casino host sportingly volunteered: “She seemed to count pretty good.” O’Brian, asked if he had serious matrimonial designs on his date, drawled: “You’d better ask the princess.” Soraya, once a queen but never a princess, only smiled mysteriously. When Romano Mussolini was a boy, his father, Italy’s Dictator Benito Mussolini, who sawed passably on a violin, banned jazz in the country because it was “an expression of an inferior race.” Romano and his older brother Vittorio soon became clandestine jazz buffs. Vittorio smuggled U.S. jazz records into the Mussolini household throughout the Fascist era, and on occasion Papa Mussolini would grudgingly admit that some of the disks had merit in a decadent way. But the Duce did not live to see the day when Romano, now 33, has won acclaim as one of Italy’s coolest jazz pianists. Describing his music as a “cross between California and Eastern hard bop,” Romano specializes in “Italian blues,” plays entirely by ear, is also a self-taught harmonica and guitar player. Last week he was fronting a combo of five pieces that was packing them in on the Italian nightclub circuit. Two fair blooms of Scandinavian beauty—Sweden’s Princesses Birgitta and Désirée—were due in the U.S. this week for a ten-day round of social and ceremonial hoopla that had hostesses atwitter, eligible bachelors preparing to be at their dashing commoner best. Aside from being so easy on the eyes, the princesses both have attributes that are commendably down-to-earth. Lighthearted Birgitta, 23, teaches gymnastics in a private Stockholm elementary school; shy Désirée, 22, is duly qualified to teach kindergarten. A highlight of their visit, conveniently timed with the 50th anniversary of the American-Scandinavian Foundation, will be a Tribute-to-Sweden Ball at Manhattan’s Hotel Plaza—a smorgasbord benefit to raise funds for a new youth cultural center in Jerusalem. On his 74th birthday Nationalist China’s Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek chose to underscore one of the hottest issues in the U.S. election by journeying to the Nationalist-held island of Quemoy within easy range of the Red Chinese coast artillery. Bedded in Baltimore in a cast, Dr. Milton Eisenhower, 61, president of Johns Hopkins University, got word from doctors that his slipped disc will keep him out of action for another three months. With “great reluctance,” brother Dwight accepted his resignation from advisory committees on Government organization and inter-American affairs. In London to be a 20th Century-Fox movie version of Cleopatra, Cinemactress Elizabeth Taylor has lain ill for four weeks—at an “astronomical” cost in lost shooting time to Producer Walter Wanger. With a low, persistent fever, Liz was confined to the London Clinic, where she was under the care of two of Queen Elizabeth II’s personal physicians. A semi-medical diagnosis of her mysterious ailment came from London’s Daily Mail, which reckoned that Liz had contracted exotic Malta fever—a malady afflicting humans through goat’s milk—while on a vacation in the Greek Islands. If that were so, it was surely the most costly Malta milk in cinematic history.