People: Home Folks

With a birthday party and a homecoming in the same week, Buckingham Palace was a bustling place for parents, grandparents and small fry alike. Prince Charles a vigorous three, snuffed out his candles with one puff, and highly approved his cake decorated with candy figures of his heroes, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Pluto. For the papers and people of Britain, a picture of the party also provided a reassuring view of King George VI, the first one since his recent lung operation. It was, said the Daily Mirror, “a picture that will cheer the heart of the nation.”

By week’s end, London cheered the rest of the family home. Back from Canada

Back from Canada and the U.S., Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip docked in Liverpool, swung through an 80-minute tour of the city before taking the royal train to Euston station where Charles, Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret were waiting to greet them. At the palace, patient crowds standing in a pelting rain demanded a sight of the travelers. After the traditional balcony appearance, the household settled down: Charles to inspect some more presents (among them an Indian suit and some fresh red apples from Canada), Elizabeth and Philip to enjoy one welcome day of rest and family life before the next round of royal duties.

Female Talent

In Hollywood, Mary Pickford, 58, announced that she had agreed to make her first movie in 19 years. She will play the part of a librarian in a picture called The Library.

Just for the record, a Manhattan reporter asked Ava Gardner how she liked married life on the third try. Frankly, said Ava, “I thought I was going to be blase -_. . but now when people call me Mrs. Sinatra, I break out into a fit of giggles . . . When I was younger, I used to think how wonderful it would be to have four sons. But I’m 28 now. It’s too late for such a large family. I think I can be happy with two, maybe three kids.”

When it was found that a Shrine circus (some seals, horses, dogs and elephants) was bedded down in the New Orleans auditorium where Margaret Truman was scheduled to sing, the order was given to cart them off to a parking lot for the night. Reason: Miss Truman is allergic to animals. Next day in Mobile, Ala., her concert manager set the record straight. Miss Truman loves animals, he said, and she is not allergic to them. It was all the fault of the Secret Service men who “made up the allergy angle to have the animals kept away from the auditorium because housing of the animals made the conditions somewhat hazardous.”

In Washington, a few with long memories recognized Edith Dahl, who, fourteen years ago, had led a successful tabloid campaign (with pleas and a picture to General Franco) for the release of her aviator husband Harold E. (“Whitey”) Dahl from a Spanish prison. She was now supporting fan-dangling Sally Rand as a comic violinist in a northeast Washington nightclub. What was Whitey doing? Edith had no idea.

Behavior Patterns

On the eve of her Metropolitan Opera debut in La Boheme, Soprano Patrice Munsel found that the tabloids had headlined her in a real-life Fledermaus mixup. Ingenue leads: herself, and a coal-mine heiress named Sally Mundy. Male leads: Gregg Juarez, a sometime television actor, and Robert Schuler, a candy heir who shared the same apartment under an agreement that whoever married first would have his bride move in. Plot: Juarez falls in love with Munsel, Schuler with Mundy. Everyone decides this is a mistake, so they switch affections and engagements. Climax: denials on the part of everyone but Juarez. The whole story, they said, was a diabolic plot on the part of Juarez, who hoped the publicity would help him get some TV spots.

Bill Veeck, new president of the St. Louis Browns, and Fred Saigh, president of the Cardinals (who have hardly spoken to each other for the past six months), called off their feud long enough to appear as Romeo and Juliet on a local radio show for the Red Cross blood bank. Picked by the studio audience, Veeck played Romeo to Saigh’s Juliet. Said Veeck later-“I congratulated him. He made a dignified Juliet. It was purely platonic.”

The Players club in Manhattan staged a 70th birthday surprise party for their friend and noted wit, Franklin P. Adams Highlight of the evening: a special edition of “The Conning Tower,” F.P.A.’s old newspaper column. The contributors included Edna Ferber, Louis Untermeyer, and the playwriting team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Grouse who sounded the keynote of the celebration:

To know P.P. Adams

Is worth ten Call Me Madams [advt.]

This year’s Nobel Prize for literature* went to Par Lagerkvist, 60, member of the Swedish Academy that awards the prize, a versatile writer who has turned out more than 20 books in the past 40 years. His latest novel: Barabbas recently published in the U.S.

-For news of other Nobel Prizewinners see SCIENCE.