People, Jun. 8, 1959

Back in New Brunswick, where he grew up, Britain’s peppery Lord Beaverbrook put up at Fredericton’s Lord Beaverbrook Hotel, spent hours right next door in the city’s Lord Beaverbrook Art Gallery, one of his many gifts to the province. Facing the local press on the eve of his 80th birthday, Journalist Beaverbrook parried questions with professional skill, along the way paid bittersweet tribute to a transatlantic competitor. Asked by a newshound what he regards as his greatest achievement in publishing, His Lordship shot back: “Reading the 145 pages of the New York Times Sunday edition in one sitting, through and through, every word of it! “*

After an audit of his income taxes paid in the past twelve years, Actor William (“Bud”) Abbott, 63, surviving half of the Abbott & Costello comedy team, was mowed down by revenooers. Conceding that his arrears total about $500,000, Taxpayer Abbott lamented that he is out of cash, his $125,000 ranch, his financial interest ($100,000) in old movies, his house (up for sale on Uncle Sam’s orders) and friends. Said he of old acquaintances who forgot: “All my so-called pals suddenly don’t know me any more—now that the booze has stopped flowing.”

Cuba’s bearded Premier Fidel Castro dropped all affairs of state to take personal command of the search for his kid brother Raul, 27, listed among the missing after taking off in a light plane for a short flight from Havana. Next day Raul, trigger-happy commander in chief of Cuba’s armed forces, turned up safe in Cuban swampland after a crash landing in a storm. Just to complicate matters, the rescue plane that picked up Raul to return him to Havana in triumph landed with another crash (jammed landing gear) near the capital. Looking more than ever like a beardless revolutionary beatnik, Raul was greeted by his staunch revolutionist wife Vilma.

Thunder-throated Actress Tallulah Bankhead, 57, who entered a Manhattan hospital last fortnight for what her physician called “a general checkup,” learned what ailed her. Diagnosis: four broken ribs, cracked in a household fall and easily mended.

In Hollywood the U.S.’s No. 1 rocketeer, German-born Wernher von Braun, cast a scientific eye on Cinemactor Curt Jurgens, showed German-born JÜrgens a replica of the nose cone of the Army’s Pioneer III lunar probe, which soared more than a third of the way to the moon last December. Then the pair chatted amiably about JÜrgens’ role as Von Braun in a film biography to be titled / Aim at the Stars.

In London, Buckingham Palace felt moved to formally deny that the frolicsome Duke of Edinburgh, attending a flower show in Chelsea, had pressed a button that set off a lawn sprinkler, doused two hapless photographers. But some newspapers kept pointing the finger of guilt at Philip. Snarled a London Herald byliner: “I still believe the Duke dunnit.”

U.S. Aviatrix Jacqueline Cochran waved hello at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport, dashed on to more airy business. As first female president of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, Jackie, robust and fiftyish, chaired the gathering of the 53-year-old F.A.I, for its first meeting ever held in the U.S.S.R. She also presented the Federation’s gold medal to Soviet Plane Designer Andrei N. Tupolev, brain behind Russia’s vaunted TU-104 and TU-114 jett transports.

To New York Post Columnist Leonard Lyons, ageless (74) Cinemagnate Samuel Goldwyn gave a measure of his current prosperity: “I’ve been so busy with Porgy and Bess that for the first time in 50 years I bought a readymade suit.”

In as gracious an action as Washington has seen in years, Mamie Eisenhower staged a White House garden party for some 600 old folks, most of them residents of homes for the aged in the capital area. The elders came on canes, crutches, in wheelchairs and, in one case, a mobile bed. One blind old lady had not ventured into the outside world for the past four years. Among the guests: young-in-heart (89) Rebecca Clark, mother of retired General Mark Clark. Mamie’s greeting: “Bless your sweet heart! It’s nice to see you.” Another oldster in attendance: onetime (McKinley to Hoover) White House Guard Charles Gleason, 92, to whom the First Lady said: “Welcome back home. Does it look natural?” Replied canny Flatfoot Gleason: “It looks as if you need more protection around here!”

After confounding his co-politicos by bellowing his oratory in the Louisiana legislature, Louisiana’s Democratic Governor Earl Kemp Long, 63, brother and political legatee of assassinated Demagogue Huey Long, checked into a Galveston hospital after a quick flight from Baton Rouge. His doctor: Titus Harris, head of the department of neurology and psychiatry at the medical school of the University of Texas.

* Old Pro Beaverbrook failed to explain how the monumental Times he read could possibly have contained an odd number of pages.