Peggy Cummins, long the leader in the Hollywood clamber for the Amber role in Forever Amber--Irish-born, London-developed, 5 ft. i in., blonde, babyfaced, ripe-mouthed, grave-eyed and 20--bagged it.

Renie, mononymic Hollywood fashion designer, peered into the future, spied something eye-bugging: "transparent covering over the bosom for cocktail and evening clothes--and complete exposure in some instances." To the surprise of few, the Hollywood-Broadway axis straightway began to bare its collective breast:

Carole Landis thought it better to "leave a little to the imagination."

Paulette Goddard protested coyly: "I just got over one cold."

Jane Russell looked forward to the competition: "Maybe now I could get a little peace and quiet."

Ann Corio, veteran stripteuse, didn't believe it. "Renie shows that she doesn't know what she's talking about," snapped the uncharitable ecdysiast, "because 90% of the girls in Hollywood have nothing to expose in the first place."

Guests in the House

Lady Astor, drawing newshawks as a honeypot draws flies, was still ad-libbing for publication, three weeks after she landed in the U.S. Her advice to U.S. Anglophobes: "You had better get on your knees and thank God for Great Britain." Her advice to occupation authorities: "I would send a Salvation Army to Europe with Bibles. ..." Lady Astor on the sexes: "Women have more moral courage than men. . . . We didn't make this world." On the future of the male: "I think you ought to have a rest, really."

Bishop Thomas Tien, cardinal-designate, of Tsingtao, China, and two noncoms from Brooklyn made a striking picture of international amity (see cut) when a troop transport arrived in San Diego from the Far East. The noncoms were going home at last; the bishop was bound for Rome and investiture as China's first cardinal.

Winston Churchill, last in Cuba as an impetuous young lieutenant taking a first excited peek at a shooting war, returned after 51 years of a roving commission. In 1895 he had ridden (as an observer) with a Spanish column pursuing Cuban rebels through the bullet-buzzing jungle; now he rode in a motorcade through Havana streets choked with Churchill-cheering crowds. He lunched with the President, gave the V-sign from the wedding-cake palace balcony, uncorked a brave "Viva la perla de las Antillas!" The world's most celebrated cigar-smoker relaxed in the land of plenty. Given 100 Havanas by the Minister of Agriculture, he responded with a testimonial: "They have a good effect on my temper."

Oceans of Love

Major Arthur Wermuth, famed "One-Man Army" of Bataan, announced that in Michigan he would be a candidate for the U.S. Senate. In Manila one Olivia Josephine Oswald, shapely Filipina, announced that she was Mrs. Arthur Wermuth, sued for an annulment (and 200 pesos a month). He had married her, said she, on the roof of a Manila hotel in 1941; as parti i evidence she produced a group photo of herself, the one-man army, and another couple. She called it a wedding-day picture. Major Wermuth, married to a U.S. girl since 1935, called it just a picture. Said he: "I don't know a thing about it. I never really knew her."

Eleanor Jenemann Thompson, 26, wife of the philandering Pittsburgh sergeant who fathered quadruplets (three lived) in wartime England, finally sued him for divorce, opened the way for his marriage to the quadruplets' mother, 24-year-old Norah Carpenter. Grounds: "indignities." Cried ex-Sergeant William H. Thompson: "Hurray!" Mother Norah, still in Derbyshire, promptly inquired about transatlantic plane fares, bubbled: "Boats are too slow for me now."

Past Masters

General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery had two new titles--one that recalled the past, another that thrust him into the future. He was now Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, and new Chief of the Imperial General Staff.* His job was to tailor Britain's Army to the shape of the atomic age.

Michael Arlen (old name: Dikran Kouyoumdjian), who bounded to fame & fortune in the early '20s with his best-dressed tales of smartly ruined women and ruinous men (The Green Hat, May Fair), and who then relaxed into well-cushioned obscurity, decided that the best was yet to be. A man's 40s and 50s are his best years, he declared, "because he knows what he can do and can't do."

Prewar dweller on the Riviera, he hoped to return "in about a year," meantime dwelt in Manhattan with handsome, Greek-born Wife Atalanta (the former Countess Atalanta Mercati), Son Michael John, Daughter Venetia. Now 50 and quite grey (but with wavy and slickly groomed hair), Glitterateur Arlen was trying to grow a stomach to earn the children's respect. Said he: "In my house everyone goes around nude ... so everyone peers at me, looking for the corporation. But it's not there!"

Other brilliantined Arlenisms:

P:"I hate writing. And I really mean it. Most writers say they hate it, but they really don't. I do."

P: "I like Hollywood. Yes, I know most writers say they don't like Hollywood. That's because it's fashionable not to like Hollywood. But I like it."

P: "Most novelists are very unattractive. They have to base their knowledge of women on conversation, or having slept with the housekeeper."

P: "I am looking forward to reading Remarque's new book, Arch of Triumph, but I don't suppose I shall like it, because it is indignant. Everyone's indignant about something nowadays."

Arlen, who is now writing his third play, The Humble Peacock, views with alarm "the squalid enthusiasm with which countless men, women and children of America and England insist on writing novels, plays and stories."

Richard Allen Knight, scurrilous zany-about-town, long missing from Manhattan, where he had consolidated his tabloid fame by loudly losing many a weekend in public, turned up in Mexico. Onetime Attorney Knight (disbarred) was inviting his soul at Cuernavaca, Empress Carlota's hideaway, 40 miles from Mexico City. His constant companion: Dorothy Ledyard Knight Kniffin, once his wife, now Reville Kniffin's. Playboy Knight kept his end up in expatriate society: he stood on his head in one hotel lobby, stood on his head on another hotel porch, tried publicly to imitate Frankenstein's monster, and sometimes jumped up & down and cried, "Woo! Woo!" Fellow expatriates, accustomed to all sorts & conditions, paid him little mind.

* His predecessor: the former Sir Alan Francis Brooke, who linked two of his names to become Lord Alanbrooke.

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