People, Jun. 22, 1959

As she made an undulating exit down a flight of stage steps two years ago, neatly curved (38-23-37) Singer Abbe Lane Cugat, appearing on NBC-TV’s Xavier Cugat Show, took a humiliating tumble before her bandleader husband and goggle-eyed televiewers. Last week, claiming that the “defective, unsafe” steps had left her with a creaky knee and other locomotor impairments, Abbe, 27, hit NBC with a $600,000 suit for her injuries and loss of earnings. Cugie, 59, whose show was not renewed by NBC because Regular Lane then tumbled for other offers, joined Abbe in the courtroom conga line, asked NBC for $100,000 for the loss of Abbe’s “services, earnings and society.”

Blues Singer Billie Holiday, 44, laid up in Manhattan with a host of internal ailments aggravated by longtime alcoholism and dope addiction, was arrested in her hospital bed. The rap: illegal possession of heroin, which Billie had somehow obtained, probably from a smuggling visitor.

Joining other senior Royal Air Force brass in a submachine-gun target match, Britain’s sporting Chief of Air Staff Sir Dermot Boyle sprayed much lead to little avail, wound up 21st in an eagle-eyed field of 22 officers. He took his crushing defeat stoically: “Either I’m a very bad shot or there’s a great deal of insubordination in the air force.”

Mop-haired Pianist Van Cliburn, 24, recently given to muttering about his mysterious true love, either unveiled the damsel herself or made a third party quite jealous. Stalked by a photographer for the London Evening News, Van was spotted strolling hand in hand with pretty, young (19) Tonina Dorati, daughter of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra’s Conductor Antal Dorati, now also on a European tour. Earlier, Cliburn characterized his nameless heartthrob as “someone who thinks she’s a musician—but she’s not.” By coincidence, Tonina plays the piano without distinction.

Karim Aga Khan IV, 22, and Harvard University had a mutually satisfying parting. He got a bachelor of arts degree (with honors in history); Harvard got from the serious-minded Aga Khan, spiritual head of some 20 million Ismaeli Moslems, $50,000 for scholarships to Middle Eastern students, preferably Moslems, over the next ten years. Said he: “I know now that I shall never regret the decision I took after succeeding to my grandfather’s title to return and complete my studies at Harvard . . . This university is among the greatest inspirers of liberal scholarship in the modern world.”

Invited to address the Woman’s National Democratic Club in Washington as its first “nonpolitical speaker” in ages, Actor Ralph Bellamy, a superb young Franklin D. Roosevelt in Broadway’s long-running Sunrise at Campobello, startled the ladies by opening with a political announcement. Said Bellamy forthrightly: “I’m a registered Democrat—but I voted for Ike.”

What did Evangelist Billy Graham and Wife Ruth observe on their afternoon stroll through the parks of London? Britain’s newsmen grew more curious as Graham tossed out hints like purple confetti. Said he: “I have traveled all over the world and never seen anything like it!” Pressed for specifics, he allowed: “The parks looked as if they had been turned into a bedroom.” Still an ambiguous witness, he served up some advice for all young folks: “The new generation is better acquainted with Jayne Mansfield’s statistics than they are with the Seventh Commandment . . . Slow down! Sex is a great thing—so long as it is not misused.” Then, after he sipped tea with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace, Sightseer Graham was at last pinned down by an insistent reporter just as he was boarding a plane for Moscow. What “embarrassed” the Grahams: “We saw two couples in the midst of the sex act in daylight.”

Tokyo announced that Wall Street Lawyer Thomas E. Dewey will be retained for a year to help Japan boost its exports and ride herd on Japan’s commercial interests in the U.S. Fee (including Dewey’s anticipated expense account): $200,000. But someone had goofed. Next day, after Dewey’s office issued a firm “no comment,” Japan’s government allowed that the deal is not sealed as yet. Premature publicity may have doomed it.

Negro Playwright Lorraine Hansberry, 28, whose Broadway hit, A Raisin in the Sun (TIME, March 23), was voted Broadway’s best by Manhattan’s drama critics, was trapped in an embarrassing predicament. Her play chronicles the many miseries and few joys of a poor Negro family in Chicago’s ugly South Side slums. Last week the city of Chicago sued Lorraine and four others in her family for not correcting a long list of building-code violations (bad wiring, rats, falling plaster, etc.) in eight tenements owned by the Hansberrys. Location: the ugly South Side slums.