People: Jan. 24, 1964

Lyndon Baines Johnson does not do things by halves, and Susan Wagner, 53, wife of New York’s mayor, found it out first hand. In St. Luke’s Hospital for a checkup, she was the pleased recipient of a surprise getwellogram. “When I learned you were in the hospital, I thought about the many long hours you spent in being hospitable to me and mine in 1960,” wrote L.B.J. in horizon-to-horizon Texas style. “I realize I was one of those who probably contributed to asking you to do too much. Lady Bird joins me in praying that you will be out of the hospital and well very quickly. We want you to know we love you very much.”

A source in the Soviet space program just could not keep from busting his buttons, and the news, still officially unconfirmed, was out that Cosmonette Valentino Tereshlcova, 26, and Cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev, 34, married last November, are expecting a child next summer.

Hardly anyone could believe that carefully curried Cary Grant had turned 60. But not even Sophie Tucker could believe that she was 80. After a one-candle-cake celebration during her annual birthday engagement at New Orleans’ Roosevelt Hotel, she took issue with her reported octogenarian status. “I’m 76,” protested the very last of the red-hot mamas. “I’ll tell you why the statistics are mixed up. I was 16 when I first went to New York, and the law was you couldn’t work in a cabaret until you were 18. So I went home and painted up and piled my hair up high and passed for 20. The record has been bugging me ever since. Good Lord, I won’t be alive when I’m 80.” And what was her secret for getting as far as she had? “Keep breathing,” she dimpled.

The family long ago accepted his death, but the legal loose ends still remained to be cleared up. At last, in a Westchester, N.Y., surrogate’s court, an affidavit was filed by his father to have Michael Rockefeller declared legally deceased. Lost two years ago off the southern New Guinea coast when his catamaran capsized, Mike at 23 left an estate of $660,000 in mixed investments. In the absence of a will, the money will goto his parents, Nelson Rockefeller and First Wife Mary Todhunter Clark Rockefeller.

The last minute is the best time to change your mind. At least Roswell Gilpatric, 57, thinks so. Finally making his much-talked-about return to private law practice after three years as Deputy Defense Secretary, he called a farewell press conference and said he no longer felt that the three military services could be usefully united. Nor did he still think that the three civilian service secretaries could better function as Assistant Defense Secretaries. And he had also abandoned the idea for a single Chief of Staff to represent all the military branches. But it wasn’t a total turnabout. He still agrees with Robert McNamara on greater reliance on missiles.

“Americans haven’t been as nasty to any actress as they were to me. Elizabeth Taylor can get away with murder, but my pictures were taken off the market.” Still, times have changed, admits Ingrid Bergman, 48, in the current Redbook, and so has she. The celebrated storm around her “love child” by Director Roberto Rossellini has died down, and the boy, Robertino, has grown into a strikingly handsome 13-year-old. In Rome to film The Lady’s Vengeance, she spent a lot of time with him and her eleven-year-old twin daughters, Isabella and Ingrid. As a result of a long and angry custody fight, the children live with neither parent during the school year, instead have an apartment in Rome presided over by a governess. Even so, the thrice-married Swedish actress thinks things have worked out all right. “They’re my friends as well as my children, and that’s important. You get a wonderful feeling when they trust you enough to tell you their problems.”

Music will be by Igor Stravinsky and script by Christopher Fry. It will be filmed in full-color Cinerama, and the stars include Peter O’Toole, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman and Maria Callas, who won’t sing but might “hum a little.” Still feeling that a bit more bounce is needed for The Bible, Director John Huston, 57, has added his bibulous knight of the Iguana, Richard Burton, to either narrate or play (but not raise) Cain. Did that mean Liz Taylor would also join the cast? Absolutely not, quoth Huston. “Perhaps there may be something for her in the sequel—when we do the part about Potiphar’s wife.”

Midst laurels stood: the Rev. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, 57, given the John F. Kennedy Award of the Catholic Interracial Council of Chicago, thus becoming the first head of the Presbyterian Church ever honored by a Catholic group; Fisk University President Stephen Wright, 53, elected a board director of the Association of American Colleges, the first Negro ever to achieve such a post; Swiss Sculptor-Painter Alberto Giacometti, 62, named for the $10,000 Guggenheim International Award, the U.S.’s richest art prize; Actress Patricia Neal, 38, Actor Albert Finney, 27, and Director Tony Richardson, 35, presented with the 1963 New York Film Critics’ top awards for their work in Hud (Miss Neal) and Torn Jones (Finney and Richardson).