People: In the Red

Surrealist Salvador Dali, a realist about his worldly goods, called the cops to report that his seaside bungalow at Pebble Beach, Calif. had been ransacked. Missing: several suitcase loads of silver, jewelry, furs. Ignored by the burglars: all of Dali’s crutch-&-limp-watch paintings.

While the Duchess of Kent was away from home, someone got into her rambling Victorian country place (Coppins, in Buckinghamshire), snitched a police whistle that London bobbies had given the pretty widow for use in just such an emergency.

In Tokyo, Crown Prince Akihito, a young man of well-defined lineage, lost his great & good friend, Aka, a dog of questionable ancestry. Most likely explanation of the disappearance: dog meat is a staple item on the Japanese black market.

In the Running

In Dawson Springs, Ky., Senator Alben W. Barkley very nearly missed reaching his 70th birthday next fortnight: the auto he was riding in was struck by another on a bridge. The other plunged 35 feet, injuring the driver’s head; Barkley’s car stayed aloft, with the Senator inside, uninjured but shaken.

In Jersey City, ex-Mayor Frank Hague, onetime political Pooh-Bah of New Jersey (and longtime embarrassment to Franklin Roosevelt), tossed some pearls to a gathering of rookie cops and firemen. “Stay out of the clutches of money lenders and don’t get tied up with liquor,” advised his ex-honor. “That’s why I was successful. I had will power.”

In Topeka, Kans., Senator Arthur Capper, who will have been in the Senate 29 years next March, made almost no news at all at 82: he announced that he would be a candidate for reelection.

In Clover

Lord Mountbatten, Governor General of the Dominion of India, got the royal nod from his cousin, George VI, on his selection of titles to go with his new earldom (TIME, Aug. 25). Henceforth, it was announced in London, he will be known as Earl Mountbatten of Burma and Baron Romsey of Romsey.

In Corsham, England, Lieut. Philip Mountbatten presided at the dedication of a new war memorial. Another unveiler, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was back home in Texas, to dedicate a statue of Will Rogers at Fort Worth, while Margaret Truman sang Home on the Range.

Elsewhere in Texas, John Nance Garner unbuckled his belt and took it easy by playing piggyback with great-grandson John Garner Curry, 2½ (see cut). The ex-Vice President was looking no farther ahead than his 70th birthday, next fortnight.

The familiar face of Enrico Caruso, in silver, turned up in the family-circle lobby of the Metropolitan Opera House. In a flurry of bulb-popping, the late great tenor’s widow, Mrs. Dorothy Caruso (who had two unhappy marriages after Caruso’s death, resumed the name of her devoted “Rico” after each divorce), presented a heroically scowling bust of the tenor, flanked by four full-blown little nymphs, to the Met’s General Manager Edward Johnson (see cut).

Out of Context

Novelist Gertrude Atherton, who got herself “rejuvenated” by X ray at 64, still had young ideas as she turned 90 in San Francisco. When jolly Mayor Roger Lapham gave her a gold medal, she poutingly demanded a kiss as well, received a peck on the forehead, both cheeks.

Britain’s Poet Laureate John Masefield, 69, who takes his job seriously,* turned out a little 25-line prothalamion on the approaching marriage of Princess Elizabeth and Philip. Excerpts:

To pray that she, our future queen, may

hear

Through many happy years, the bells

rejoice,

Telling of people glad, a sovereign dear,

A land restored, a purpose again clear

With wind-delighting clamor of glad

voice.

An awed Hollywood audience got a look at Sam Ego’s House or Angels Aghast, a new William Saroyan play. The plot had something to do with moving a house across a California town peopled with such Saroyanesque characters as Utmost Urge and his four sons, Easy, Outer, Inner and Ample. In a program note, Saroyan explained what it all meant: “I stink, you stink, we all stink, but we are getting used to it.”

*A poet laureate is expected—but not required—to produce “formal and appropriate” verses on royal birthdays, other state occasions. Emoluments have varied as much as the quality of laureates’ verse (Dryden received £300 and a butt of Canary wine annually; Tennyson only £99, no wine). For his £75 yearly pension, Laureate Masefield works harder than most of his predecessors, is probably exceeded only by Tennyson and Shadwell in the quantity of his laureations.