Nation: Capital Notes: Mar. 31, 1961

Bridges’ Game

New York’s Governor Nelson Rockefeller has taken note of some G.O.P. disinterest in running Dick Nixon for the presidency again. Among the heads cool to Nixon are North Dakota’s Senator Milt Young and New Hampshire’s Senator Styles Bridges, who were once strong in Nixon’s corner. Rocky has sent word to Bridges that he would like to lunch with him next time he visits Washington.

Cut the Beefing

After the White House made such a hash out. of an egg-bald attempt to swipe the chef who works for the French Ambassador to London, staffers admit that something is cooking again—but very slowly on the back burner, so as not to stir up a stew. The announcement will be made soon that the White House has a new cook. In the opinion of some who have dined at the White House table, the change is none too soon.

Familiar Faces

Showing traditional party loyalty while shifting the bric-a-brac in his office, Postmaster General Ed Day rescued the portraits of two distinguished Democratic predecessors. Franklin Roosevelt’s Postmaster, James Farley, was restored to the wall of the Postmaster General’s inner office after long banishment in the shadows of a reception room at the hands of

Arthur Summerfield. Mustached Adlai Stevenson I, who was Grover Cleveland’s Assistant P.M.G. before he became his Vice President, is to be hung there too. Day was pleased to learn that the first Adlai was so aggressive in uprooting Republican postmasters and replacing them with Democrats that he was known around Washington as “The Hatchet.”

The Friend Within

Onetime Movie Tycoon Joe Kennedy dined in Hollywood with Actor Tony Curtis and conferred with Producer Jerry Wald on the filming possibilities of a book that interested him. Result: Wald has been meeting with Bobby Kennedy and other veterans of the Senate labor racketeering committee staff to work out the details of the” movie version of Bobby’s own story of the Teamster investigations, The Enemy Within.

On the Lambs

Jack Kennedy’s favorite book is David Cecil’s Melbourne, the biography of William Lamb, second Viscount Melbourne (1779-1848), who was Queen Victoria’s first Prime Minister. Readers have noted striking similarities between the character, vigor and intellectual attainments of the Kennedy family and Lamb & Co.—who sparkled in an age of new frontiers and brilliant individuality. Running through the pages, too, is a startling bevy of women named Caroline.