People: Mar. 22, 1963

For once all her troubles were small ones, which made a nice change of pace in the saga of Singer Judy Garland, 40. First, Judy flew to London to toast her new film, / Could Go On Singing, and buss British Juvenile Gregory Phillips, 15, who plays her son. So far, so good. Then back to Manhattan, where real-life daughter Liza Minnelli, 17, appearing on TV with Jack Paar and struggling through rehearsals for an off-Broadway musical, had fractured a bone in her foot. Finally the trolley ran out of gas, and Judy, laid low by flu in her St. Regis Hotel suite, couldn’t have felt less like singing.

From his plush refuge in suburban Madrid, onetime Argentine Strongman Juan Peron, 67, last fall penned a petition to the Bishop of Madrid, begging remission of his 1955 excommunication, which followed many outrages against the church, climaxed by his expulsion of two Catholic prelates from Argentina. To the Vatican went Peron’s appeal, accompanied by a recommendation from the bishop which convinced the Holy See that here was a true repentant. The request was approved, and the black sheep is back in the fold.

Sold recently on the New York Stock Exchange were 75,000 shares, or $3,675,000 worth of common stock, in the Columbia Broadcasting System by Board Chairman William S. Paley, 61. His remaining CBS investment: $66,000 shares worth $44,382,500.

Quoth the sunburned satirist: “I look like a peeling billboard.” Thus out of the bush near Nairobi, Kenya, strewing perels of witdom to mark his trail, came a hornrimmed, slyly befuddled big white hunter known to civilized nations as Humorist S. J. Perelman, 59. Having bagged a Broadway comedy hit. The Beauty Part, Perelman was an author in search of “four magazine articles.” At the end of his Land-Roving safari through Kenya, he caromed up to London, hoping later to join a tiger shoot in India, then on to Burma and Bangkok to see what the jet-set drifters were doing for laughs.

Ill lay: the Right Rev. Arthur Lichtenberger, 63, Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, with Parkinson’s disease, continuing in office on a severely limited schedule of appointments and public speeches; Bette Davis, 54. 1963 Oscar nominee, confined to her room at Manhattan’s Hotel Plaza, battling flu; Ted Weems, 62. bandleader, on the critical list after an emergency tracheotomy to aid breathing (tentative diagnosis: stroke), at Hillcrest Medical Center, Tulsa.

Some old tunes are apt to sound mighty familiar when the Tommy Dorsey band goes touring this May with its new featured vocalist, Frank Sinatra Jr., 19, son of Sinatra’s first marriage. Raised by his mother Nancy in Beverly Hills, Frank Jr. quietly attended local public and private schools, still plans to continue drama studies at the University of Southern California. But once he cuts loose on the songs that Daddy taught him, history may well repeat itself. During an impromptu public appearance at Disneyland last summer, one youngish matron came up to the bandstand and purred: “That was almost like the Paramount Theater in 1944.”

The way he dodged newsmen in The Netherlands, Henry Ford II, 45, must have had something big in the works. A new auto design for Europe? Nope. A new yacht for Ford? Yes! Under construction at a Hague shipyard, the 100-ft. yacht has twin diesels for 18-knot cruising speed, a saltwater conversion plant, sumptuous guest cabins, and a master’s suite with an Italian terrazzo-tile bath fitted with gold taps. Rumored cost: close to $700,000. “If one of my friends gets details about this boat,” Ford told his builders, “he’ll immediately order a bigger, faster, more luxurious one.”

“France can keep Mona Lisa. Sweden can have Ingrid, Italy can keep Gina. Monaco can keep Grace. Washington doesn’t need them.” And why not? “Because,” drawled Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, “we have Lindy Boggs.” TOSSing a wingding of a birthday party for vivacious Lindy Boggs, wife of House Democratic Whip Hale Boggs, were Lyndon and his Lady Bird, who is fast becoming one of Washington’s mostes’ hostesses. A heart-shaped cake proclaimed Lindy “Everybody’s Sweetheart,” and the Veep added further encomiums with a gold-tooled album inscribed “Woman of the Year Every Year.”

London, already astir with preparations for the April wedding of Princess Alexandra of Kent, 26, to Angus Ogilvy, 34, second son of the Earl of Airlie, began to bubble in earnest as effervescent Alexandra announced that her chief bridesmaid for the ceremony in Westminster Abbey will be Princess Anne, 12. The couple’s gift list, filed at Harrods of Knightsbridge as a handy guide for friends, indicates that they would welcome, among other things, bathroom scales, a portable barbecue, an onyx cigarette box, a toaster, Swedish decanters.

“May I show you how I stand on my head?” said the fiddle player to the Premier. Then both removed their shoes and jackets and went upsy-daisy to discuss the esoteric art of yoga. It was peppery Israeli Premier David Ben-Gurion, 76, paying a courtesy call on Violinist Yehudi Menuhin, 46, after Menuhin’s performance of a Shostakovich-concerto at a kibbutz on the Sea of Galilee. What one man didn’t know about music, the other didn’t know about politics, but they got along fine. Yoga, confided Menuhin, is the best treatment for his slipped disc, and Ben -Gurion, coming head-over -heels again, told how he had cleared up his lumbago the same way.

The man who started all those 50-mile hikes, Marine Corps Commandant David M. Shoup, 58, came due for a bit of ribbing when the Indiana Society of Washington named him “Hoosier of the Year.” But Shoup, a native of Battle Ground, Ind., took it in stride when the band played Let’s Take an Old-Fashioned Walk. In his acceptance speech, the general warmed anew to the pleasures of the great outdoors, complimented Wife Zola, his faithful camping companion on many a … But then he stopped himself. “What have I said? I hope the whole world doesn’t take off on a camping spree next week.”