People: Gastronomy

Bess Truman had some more ladies in to the White House—this time right into the kitchen. Out went the servants, and into aprons went the First Lady and friends. Occasion: luncheon for 70 students of the First Lady’s Spanish teacher, who major-dominated the cooking. Climactic dish: picadillo.*

General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s old Army cook asked his old boss to be taken back, got a “come-ahead” by wire. Complained the cook, lately a Chicago hotel chef: “You just can’t get the stuff to cook with these days.”

Trygve Lie and fellow U.N. delegates went out to the ball game, dined ball-gamely. Lie tucked in hot dogS, Australia’s Lieut. Colonel William Roy Hodgson nuzzled peanuts, The Netherlands’ Dr. Eelco N. van Kleffens crunched a candy’ bar. Observed a member of the secretariat: “It’s a crazy country, isn’t it?”

Derring-Do

Greer Garson, perched on a rock for some moviemaking, was knocked off her perch by an outsize wave and carried 30 feet out into Monterey Bay. Promptly Vincent Sallecito, a sardine fisherman acting as an extra, waded in, carried her out. Miss Garson was taken to a hospital with cuts, bruises, and a sprained back. The fisherman was taken over by the press. Said he: it was like “fishing a slippery sardine out of a bucket.” He warmed to his subject: “I’ve often dreamed of myself clasping Greer Garson in my arms, but I never thought I would do it.”

Hedy Lamarr lost $19,000 worth of warmth and beauty to burglars who called while she was out. Among the missing: a chinchilla coat ($5,000), her engagement ring ($12,000). Hedy bought a gun.

Anne Boleyn’s Psalter—the one she carried to the scaffold—was stolen from Hever Castle-in Edenbridge, England, by burglars with a sharp sense of history. Other purloined items: Husband Henry VIII’s signet ring, Queen Elizabeth’s prayer book.

Empress Eugenie’s jewelry—some she wore at Napoleon Ill’s court—was among 50 feminine fancies carried off by a thief who burglarized the Louvre. Sniffed the conservator in charge of the Louvre’s national treasures: the culprit’s choices betrayed “very doubtful taste.”

Harry S. Truman gladdened the heart of a Washington visitor who admired his silver-streaked black bow tie. The visitor —Connecticut Publisher William J. Pape —yearned for one just like it. But there was none, said the President; he therefore lent the tie to Pape for a night. White House Secretary Charles Ross took pains to keep things quite clear. “He has it on loan,” he emphasized. “We expect him to return it.”

Footage

Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg criticized U.N. for its self-inflicted title. (He would prefer UNO.) “Un what?” cried the distressed Senator. “It sounds like an emasculated affair. United Nations isn’t that and can’t be that. When you say, ‘Un,’ you haven’t done anything but grunt.” The Senator grunted.

James M. Cain corrected an old misapprehension of the public’s. Said the best-selling literary specialist in cold murder and steaming women (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice): “People think I put stark things in my stories . . . but I don’t. The situations, I dare say, are often sultry, and the reader has the illusion he is reading about sex. Actually, however, it gets very little footage.”

Somerset Maugham, now 72, said he was writing his last novel. He had once discovered a pattern in his life, he told New York Timesman Robert van Gelder, and “I resolved to complete that pattern. With this book … it will be completed.” In just a few weeks, he would go back to the French Riviera. “I had always planned to end my days there,” he explained, “so now I’ll do it.”

Younger Generation

General Douglas MacArthur’s son Arthur, now eight (see cut), made a rare public appearance in Tokyo for a rare occasion. Little-photographed Arthur, his Chinese amah (nurse), and his box camera turned up to witness his father’s first official act after his five-star rank became permanent: inspection of the honor guard at the U.S. Embassy.

Princess Elizabeth had a medium-austere 20th birthday: it fell on Easter.

An Easter-eve ball was out, because it might run past midnight. The birthday luncheon party was a family affair at Windsor Castle; the pink cake had only the thinnest icing, and clothes were not among the Princess’ gifts. (From father, as always, she got a pearl for the necklace that would finally be complete — 21 pearls — next birthday.) The royal gardens were opened to the public, and some 40,000 came; the guards’ bands played light-hearted airs; the Princess, in her familiar powder-blue ensemble, appeared at a win dow and blew kisses, then the King & Queen and Princess Margaret Rose ap peared; and later on the family walked down to the summerhouse and had tea.

Equestrianism

W. Averell Harriman had to put off a reunion with a horse that had done him a good turn. Ambassador and ex-Poloist Harriman, out of favor with the world’s Communist press as “anti-Soviet,” had admired the horse—a white stallion—in a Moscow newsreel; two days later Joseph Stalin sent the stallion (for Harriman) and a chestnut gelding (for Daughter Kathie)—and up shot Harriman’s stock. Last week, as the Ambassador flew from Washington to his new post in London, the horses were aboard a Russian ship bound for the U.S.

Paul Revere came in second at Lexington, Mass. Winner: “William Dawes,” only an also-rode (by half an hour) back in 1775. Dawes’s impersonator in the annual Patriots’ Day re-enactment finally made his own history by thumbing a lift along the route—piled his nag into a van and turned up five minutes ahead of the favorite.

Harold J. Laski talked sparks again. Declared the enfant terrible of British Labor: he had it from the horse’s mouth that the U.S. now had an atom bomb that could devastate an area as large as the United Kingdom. Prompt response from the stable: a thunderstruck nay.

*Beef, pork, lamb, and rice, garnished with almonds, olives, raisins, pimiento, and hot spices.*Present owner: Colonel John Jacob Astor, principal owner of the London Times.