People, Sep. 20, 1954

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

The day before Hurricane Edna swooped past New York, another, better-known phenomenon whooshed into Manhattan: Cinemactress Marilyn Monroe landed from an airliner and, said the tabloids, the damage, compared to Edna’s, was inestimable. Obviously relishing every wolf call and whistle, Marilyn spent her time between a few days of picture-shooting (The Seven Year Itch) at a few nightclubs and Broadway shows, and with a few hundred avid autograph-hunting youngsters.

Off to Buenos Aires to take part in a sports festival honoring Argentina’s President Juan Peron: onetime World’s Heavyweight Champion Jack Dempsey.

Back to his Washington desk hobbled Secretary of the Treasury George M. Humphrey, with a game leg for the second time this year. Last Easter Humphrey tore the muscles above his left ankle when his horse kicked him. Then he sprained the same ankle while walking on his Ohio farm. Just to keep the ankle out of trouble while Humphrey’s schedule is so tight, doctors this time put foot and ankle in a cast, gave the Secretary a cane for support.

Television audiences for the first time got to watch the finals in the annual Miss America contest, run off at Atlantic City. The winner: San Francisco’s 19-year-old Lee Ann Meriwether (5 ft. 8½ in., 124 Ibs.; bust 34½, waist 22, hips 35).

A drama student at City College of San Francisco, the new Miss America won $5,000 cash, a Nash sedan, a Philco TV set and about $50,000 in endorsement and personal-appearances fees. To show off her less obvious talents during the contest, Lee Ann gave a dramatic reading of a scene from John Millington Synge’s Riders to the Sea. Next day, Miss America modestly insisted that her figure was really nothing to get excited about. Said she: “I think Dior’s flat look came just in time to save me.”

Excitement followed peripatetic Ava Gardner wherever she went. Arriving with her entourage in Rio de Janeiro for a publicity tour, Ava stepped off her plane with her prettiest professional smile. But she soon lost her temper when she was instructed to go through the police, health and customs routine, just like any other traveler. As she opened each piece of luggage, Ava got angrier and angrier, while the customs inspector got increasingly conscientious and methodical. At length she fumed: “Let’s get the first plane out of this place. They’re a bunch of savages and I won’t stay here!” With that she flounced into a car and was off to her beflowered presidential suite at the Hotel Gloria. Ten minutes after her arrival, the manager, urgently summoned by protesting guests to Suite 901, was greeted with a flying glass of whisky and a frenzied Ava smashing everything in sight. Ordered to leave, Ava soon turned up at another hotel, next day played hostess to the Brazilian press. Said she, demurely: “I’m happy to be here. I’ve been longing to see Rio all my life.” Asked a reporter: “Were you drunk last night?” Replied Ava, sipping her third whisky: “No indeed. Never drink.” A day later, she left Brazil.

In Cuba, an old playmate of Actress Gardner’s was having a quieter time. Retired Bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín, Ava’s escort in Spain and her guest later in Reno, was visiting with Author-Sports man Ernest Hemingway. Dominguin and white-bearded “Papa” put on cool shorts and tossed a hunting lance around for a while, but spent most of their visit together hunting fish.

Just a few months after he resigned his post of Colonial Secretary in Sir Winston Churchill’s Cabinet and was made a viscount, Oliver Lyttelton, 61, who laboriously helped to cope with the Mau Mau problem in Kenya and the Communist problem in Malaya, announced he had selected his new title: Viscount Chandos of Aldershot.

In Chicago, Publisher John S. Knight

(Chicago Daily News, Detroit Free Press, Akron Beacon Journal, Miami Herald) got word that he will be the first recipient of the La Prensa Prize for American Friendship. The award, established in 1950 by Dr. Alberto Gainza Paz, Buenos Aires’ exiled publisher of La Prensa, will be made in Rio de Janeiro next month to honor Publisher Knight’s “courageous leadership in fighting for press freedom” throughout the Americas.

At a quiet luncheon held at Chequers, their country home, Sir Winston and Lady Churchill celebrated their 46th wedding anniversary.

Hollywood’s gay young marrieds, Lana Turner and Lex (Tarzan) Barker, were reported to have kissed and made up, after a spat at a recent party. To celebrate the occasion, they did what any other sensible couple might do—if they were Lana and Lex. Reported Columnist Sidney Skolsky: “Lana and Lex, who just bought sports cars exactly alike, caused a sensation … as they cruised down Sunset Boulevard side by side in their creamy-white convertibles with black and white upholstery.”