People: Golden Hours

Gwendolyn Cafritz, Washington’s No. 1 hostess since Perle Mesta turned diplomat, tried her hand at writing a guest column for the New York Daily News: “All of us in Washington, surrounded by so many clever people, are consciously patriotic . . . If you go to those much maligned cocktail parties, a typical day might include four between 6 and 8 p.m. They are not exactly mischief and fun, but good conversation and partisan information on the topic of the day . . . the excellence of the Kress collection, or the intellectual brilliance of the Secretary of State. As you go from an important embassy to a well-known columnist’s, to the Sulgrave Club and a chic Georgetown house, any Washingtonian will know in advance which Supreme Court, Cabinet and Senate couples might be encountered. Cave dwellers seem to prefer conservatives; high average I.Q.s, Jeffersonian Democrats.”

At one of those cocktail parties, in his Washington embassy, the Dominican Republic’s ambassador, Dr. Luis Thomen, pinned his country’s Order of Juan Pablo Duarte (highest decoration given a foreigner) on Major General Anthony C. (“Nuts”) McAuliffe, hero of Bastogne. On hand to get the same medal (his tenth foreign decoration): Major General Harry Vaughan, for “outstanding service to humanity . . . a staunch defender of the lofty ideals of western civilization.”

In Manhattan, Rudolph Halley, who made news on television as the file-voiced chief questioner for the Kefauver Crime Investigating Committee,signed on for another TV role. When radio’s popular Gangbusters goes on CBS television next month, he will be its narrator. Salary: more than $2,000 a week.

In Istanbul, blonde ex-Cinemactress Virginia (The Invisible Woman) Bruce and her wealthy Turkish husband Ali Ipar announced that they were very much in love after five years of marriage—and that they were going to get a divorce. Reason: Turkish law forbids commissioning an officer with a foreign wife. Ali, due for a term of military service, wants a commission. They plan to remarry when the law is changed or Ali’s tour of duty ends.

Genealogy experts in London traced two new branches which relate Queen Elizabeth to William Shakespeare. The Queen, it seems, is 18th in descent from one Mary Whalesborough, sister of Shakespeare’s great-great-great-grandmother; the Queen is also 17th in descent from one John Belknap, brother of Shakespeare’s great-great-great-great-grandmother. Meanwhile at Sandringham, the Queen joined King George VI in a garden party for members of the National Federation of the Blind. The King, who has canceled all public engagements since his recent illness, leaned on a shepherd’s staff and posed with his blind guests to give photographers a picture of smiling convalescence.

Uncrowned Heads

Albania’s ex-King Zog, who has been living in England and Egypt for the past eleven years, arrived in Manhattan, on his first visit to the U.S., for a tourist’s look at “some modern civilization.”

Sugar Ray Robinson, who lost his world middleweight title to London’s Randy Turpin after doing more touring than training, sailed from Le Havre to prepare for a return bout. To his well-wishers, he made a promise: “I will come back to France next December to rest and organize a new tour of Europe.”

Former Baseball Commissioner A. B. (“Happy”) Chandler, a practicing lawyer again for the first time in 18 years, tackled his first case in Versailles, Ky. municipal court, won an acquittal for his clients, seven Negroes charged with crap shooting. Said ex-Senator Happy: “It was a real thrill.”

Traveling as “K. Peter & Party,” exiled King Peter of Yugoslavia, representing a Manhattan public relations firm, left for Europe on his first mission: to contact old friends who might like to buy some electronic office equipment.

Saints & Sinners

Dr. Cyril Garbett, Archbishop of York, gave British morale a boost in a Liverpool sermon: “We should thank God for the British people . . . Humility and meekness have never been our national virtues, and we have neither the intellectual brilliance of the French, the plodding thoroughness of the Germans, nor the patience of the Eastern races. But we have inventive genius, a surpassing gift of poetry, a deep respect for honesty and thoughtfulness, a natural kindliness and humor combined with a spirit of adventure and courage . . . How false it is to speak as if we were a decadent race, satisfied with the glories of the past.”

General George C. Marshall gave Pentagon newsmen a progress report on his elkhound pup Nato, a recent gift from Norwegian students: “Nato tore a hole in Mrs. Marshall’s skirt while she was in the garden yesterday. He also has bitten a chunk out of my flannel trousers.” Otherwise, said the general, Nato is “very well behaved, except in spots.”

New Jersey’s J. Parnell Thomas, who served seven terms in Congress before serving a term in federal prison for taking salary kickbacks, announced a new career. “A group of friends, mostly relatives” had put up enough money for him to buy three struggling New Jersey weeklies. His previous newspaper experience: reporting for his college paper at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Senate Crime Investigating Committee, which turned up the fact that big-shot Gambler Joe Adonis had muscled into the firm that delivers Ford cars from the Edgewater, N.J. assembly plant, got a triumphant telegram from the Ford Motor Co. Adonis, now in prison on a two-to-three-year stretch, had been muscled out of the company and “no longer has any connection with the business.”