People: The Busy Life

Glittering in his gold-laced uniform, Denmark’s King Frederik boarded the 1,054-ton royal yacht Dannebrog in Copenhagen harbor and weighed anchor for Greenland on his first official visit since 1921. Queen In grid, who does not share her salty husband’s love of the sea, announced that she would make the trip by air.

At the governors’ conference in Houston, while the elders sweated over the problems of state, Virginia, Dorothy and Nina (“Honeybear”) Warren went for a swim in the Shamrock Hotel pool, flashed gleaming smiles to prove that life with father can be fun. After the little convention, the girls headed for Chicago with more smiles for daddy at the Big Show.

The West Coast television audience saw a new kind of dramatic show last week. For 15 hours and 50 minutes, a camera boat followed Florence Chadwick (first woman to swim the English Channel in both directions) in her course across the choppy 21-mile Catalina channel off San Pedro, Calif. Finally, cold, exhausted and bucking a four-knot current, she signaled her helpers to pull her into the boat less than a mile from shore.

Senator Charles W. Tobey, the 71-year-old Bible-quoting crimebuster from New Hampshire, whose second wife died last December, announced that he would marry for the third time. His bride-to-be: Mrs. David Crompton of Wilton, N.H., “an old family friend.”

On a get-acquainted tour of the NATO countries, General Matthew Ridgway spoke at Elsinore, Denmark, where he won Danish hearts by his closing phrase: Held og lykke (“Good luck to you all”), delivered in faultless Danish. In Oslo, after a meeting with King Haakon, who will be 80 years old in August, 57-year-old Soldier Ridgway reported: “I could spend hours with him. But he was very thin, and I think he should eat more.”

In Washington, ailing Cordell Hull, 80, onetime Secretary of State, presented the Library of Congress with his personal papers, some 33,000 documents covering the years from 1910, when he was a young Congressman from Tennessee, to 1950.

The Way Things Are

Summer guests at a hotel in Bad Ischl, in the Austrian lake country, noted the hand-in-hand riverbank walks of Baron Goldschmidt-Rothschild, 61, and a grey-wigged fellow guest who called herself Mrs. Harriet Brown. Beneath the wig: 46-year-old Incognito Expert Greta Garbo, who had shifted from the usual sun glasses to the trappings of middle age. But to reporters who finally penetrated the disguise, Garbo gave the same old answer: “I don’t want to talk to anyone . . . The Baron is just a very good friend.”

A Paris reporter asked TV-Comedian Milton Berle how he felt about the Bishop Fulton Sheen program which is on a competing channel with his own show. Said Berle: “We’re known as Uncle Miltie and Uncle Fultie now. It doesn’t make any difference if we’re in competition. It’s a pleasure to have him opposite me. After all, we’re both using old material.”

In Manhattan, asked whether she approved of a woman running for the presidency, Perle Mesta, U.S. Minister to Luxembourg, replied: “I know I wouldn’t want a woman captain of a ship I was on.” Her second thought: “Now isn’t that a dreadful thing for a woman minister to say?”

Dr. Hewlett Johnson, the Red Dean of Canterbury, whose journeys usually leave a foamy wake of Communist propaganda, finished a tour of Red China with the announcement: “No longer can Christians reject the germ warfare stories as propaganda.”

Former Under Secretary of State Sum, ner Welles, 59, called in a Manhattan real-estate firm to find a buyer for his famed 245-acre Oxon Hill Manor estate in Maryland, the weekend relaxing spot for many an oldtime New Dealer. Estimated value: $500,000.

Fame & Fortune

Buckingham Palace announced that the birthday of Queen Elizabeth II, which is actually April 21 but was officially celebrated on June 5 this year will be celebrated on Thursday June n next year, except for customs and excise offices and home ports, which will do their celebrating on Saturday, June 27 to avoid a midweek work stoppage.

In Manhattan, the 1952 Harmon International Aviation Awards were announced. Aviatrix: Jacqueline Auriol, daughter-in-law of the President of France, for setting the women’s speed record—509 m.p.h.—in a jet fighter. Aviator: Pan American World Airways Captain Charles F. Blair Jr., the first man to fly a single-engine fighter plane nonstop across the North Pole. Aeronaut: Lieut. Carl J. Seiberlich, U.S.N., for developing new techniques in the use of low-flying airships.

In Paris, U.S. Ambassador James Dunn presented the widow of Marshal of France Jean de Lattre de Tassigny the posthumous award of the Legion of Merit for “sustained combat operations in the struggle against Communism . . .”

Philadelphia’s late Dr. Albert C. Barnes, trigger-tempered art collector and self-made millionaire (Argyrol), who left the Barnes Foundation an art collection estimated at upwards of $20 million, also left a personal estate worth more than $2,000,000, according to an inventory filed last week.