People, Sep. 21, 1953

Names make news. Last week these names made this news:

Sir Winston Churchill, after spending the summer on the sidelines at doctor’s orders, was back on the go again. He moved into fast company by lunching at Chequers with Squadron Leader Neville Duke, Britain’s record-breaking jet pilot (see SCIENCE). Next day he dropped in at 10 Downing Street for a surprise visit, conferred for an hour with U.S. Ambassador Winthrop W. Aldrich. At week’s end, he was in the royal box at Doncaster, where Queen Elizabeth saw her horse Aureole finish third in the St. Leger stakes, later joined the royal family at Balmoral Castle to celebrate his 45th wedding anniversary with Lady Churchill. The London News Chronicle, viewing all this activity with approval, commented: “Now that he is back in the news, life as the inhabitants of Britain have come to know it assumes a more familiar and more comforting pattern. For what Wellington said of Napoleon is just as true of Sir Winston Churchill. His presence in the field is equal to 40,000 men.”

At the California State Fair, Governor Earl Warren got fussed during the crowning of a wine queen, put the royal ring of grapes on upside down, apologized: “I’m about as handy as a cub bear when it comes to crowning queens.”

Texas Playboy Sheppard (“Abdullah”) King, “tired of playing cat and mouse” with his Egyptian belly-dancing wife, Samia Gamal, announced that he was throwing her over for another torso-tosser named Nejla Ates, a 21-year-old Turk. After sparking Nejla between the acts in a Manhattan nightspot, Shep brayed happily: “She has everything—plus castanets.” They would marry as soon as he could divorce Samia, who, he predicted, would “flip her lid” at the news. In far off Cairo, Samia got the news but played it cool: “He may want to know that I had a very disdainful smile and no flipping lids.”

At a circus in Stockholm, an alert photographer got a picture of childish glee when the royal kids of Sweden—Crown Prince Carl Gustaf and Princess Christina—and a little girl friend watched the clowns go by.

Conductor Fritz Reiner, arriving in Manhattan on his way to take over the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, complained that he had found no peace in Italy. Automobiles and motorcycles roaring about with open exhausts, he said, have made Italy “the noisiest country in the world—much worse than New York or Chicago.”

Televiewers on hand for the return of NBC’s Your Show of Shows caught a new sister act in the making: the Metropolitan Opera’s Coloratura Lily Pons and rubber-faced Comedienne Imogene Coca. Wearing sequined black lace and looking enough alike to be sisters, they kicked up their heels and scampered through a lusty, full-throated lampoon of Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe warbling When Love Goes Wrong in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Rita Hayworth was large in the headlines again with a ringing declaration from Las Vegas (where she was keeping Crooner Dick Haymes company) that she would have no part of any $1,000,000 settlement with her ex-husband, Prince Aly Khan, if it meant “exposing” her three-year-old daughter Yasmin to Moslem teachings. Cried Rita: “All the money in the world can’t buy my child’s right to be raised as an American girl.” When the statement provoked a pair of anonymous letters threatening death to herself and Yasmin unless she returned her daughter to Prince Aly, Rita hired armed detectives to guard her hotel room and protect Yasmin, who was home in Los Angeles. Her attorney sent off a message to the Ago Khan urging him to “caution his Moslem followers against using violence.” As for Rita’s romance with Crooner Haymes, it was in full bloom. “I am 100% behind Dick in all his troubles,” she said. “I love him and I will marry him as soon as possible.”

Eleanor Roosevelt, due in Des Moines Oct. 5 for a lecture on the United Nations,was declared persona non grata by the trustees of University Christian Church.They refused to allow their auditorium to be used for her talk, reportedly becauseit “would be just a lot of politics.”

Robert Moses, New York City’s park commissioner and man-of-all-work, is prideful of his literary skills, cuts down his opponents with a slashing pen when he wants to get his way. After a month-long hassle with United Nations’ Secretary General Dag Hammerskjold over the parking situation at U.N. Headquarters, Moses seemed to have met his match. (The quarrel was about a part of the space in the U.N. garage which the U.N. was using to store records instead of opening it up to more automobiles.) Moses’ final blast: “To put it simply, we got the run-around in our high diplomatic palavers with the Secretary General. First we were told that the Secretary General by himself had ‘finalized’ storage instead of parking in considerable space built at great expense for parking. Now we are informed that more than 40 delegations have to be consulted to change the ‘finalization.’ One thing, however, we have learned from this international rhubarb—that English is susceptible to twists, convolutions and gradations which can make it almost a foreign language. Anyway, the U.N. secretariat version is one we don’t understand.”

India’s Prime Minister Nehru, helping to raise 100,000 rupees ($21,000) for Indian flood relief by captaining a cricket team, was pictured hunched over his bat in a contemplative mood during a practice session in New Delhi. The two-day match, between teams composed of members of the Indian Parliament, ended in a draw, with Nehru getting cheers for fielding skill (it was his first cricket game in 40 years). At one point in the match, Nehru got safely back to his wicket when a solicitous opponent delayed throwing the ball, but he would have none of it. The Prime Minister declared himself “morally out” and withdrew from the pitch.

Monaco’s fast-living Prince Rainier III, 30, wrapped his Panhard racing car around a tree while competing incognito in the Tour de France, stepped unhurt from the wreckage with an explanation: “Fog caused the accident.”

Cinemactor John Wayne, a wide-awake hero on the screen, snoozed peacefully in his plush Hollywood diggings while a rustler tried to steal the hubcaps from his trusty 1953 Cadillac. Wayne’s caretaker fired half a dozen shots at the varmint, who dropped the hubcaps and went thataway in his own 1953 Cadillac.