Avak, dark-bearded faith healer who arrived noisily in California from Iran last May, arrived in Florida from California and quickly endeared himself to the Chamber of Commerce. California's wild parties and light-mindedness, announced Avak, were not conducive to faith healing --and neither was the climate.

Sir Thomas Beecham, white-bearded British conductor who likes to distribute pieces of his mind, arrived in Manhattan with Lady Beecham. He was as generous as ever. Sir Thomas, 68, on Italy's eight-year-old Conductor Ferruccio Burco, who had arrived for a U.S. tour a few days before: "Who is responsible for this outrage? . . . Where are your police? The boy should be in kindergarten sucking a lollipop."* On musicians generally: "Musicians have no reason to be stuffy. I've seen an orangutan play the flute." On the state of things: "The world is drifting into barbarism."

Evelyn Waugh, grand old man of Britain's bright young men, reported back (in This Week magazine) after a look at Scandinavia. He found the Danes "the most exhilarating people in Europe. . . ." On the Swedes: "They believe very firmly in their own sanity." The sight of Norwegian statuary bearing no evidence of "any intellectual process or spiritual aspirations" moved him to wonder "what hope there was for the people who had made it."

George Bernard Shaw, bright young man of Britain's grand old men, made instructive reply to a Bible student who had written him in some distress because Shaw had sold his late wife's Bible. He had plenty of other Bibles left, said Shaw soothingly, and besides, the Bible was "not a book but a literature; and like all literature it contains not only wise doctrine and inspired poetry, drama and edifying fiction, but is mischievous and su-- Sir Thomas himself was conducting an orchestra at 10. perstitious. . . . Until the Kingdom of Heaven is within you, you will search the Scriptures in vain."

Sir Norman Angell, Nobel Peace Prizewinner of 1933, suggested that peace might now be preserved by avoiding a "policy of indefinite retreat before Russian power." "Otherwise," he wrote in The Steep Places (Harper; $3), "there will happen what happened before the second World War: we acquiesce in the advance of a hostile system because we insist that it is not so bad. Then when it is on top of us, we conclude that it is very bad indeed and decide to resist. But. . . aggression has attained a momentum too great to stop."

James Thurber doubted that Truman has much political future. The President always begins his radio talks at 1:30 p.m. (E.S.T.), Thurber pointed out to an inter viewer, and thus does injustice to housewives : "Needless to say, they would much rather hear Road of Life-and Dr. Malone than President Truman, and his failure to distribute his time will probably lose him the election."

"If I were to become a Commissar of Poetry," declared hard-working Anthologist Louis Untermeyer before the Poetry Society of America in Manhattan, "I would remove from every school poetry book the words magic, beauty, wonder, glamour, purple, ecstasy, moon, and spring"

The Working Class

Margaret Truman was coming right along. In Washington, she danced with Hollywood's beautiful Robert Taylor at the Navy Relief Society Ball. In Philadelphia, the Robin Hood Dell concert people wanted her for a July concert (at a reported $2,500), and it looked as if she might drop over from the Dell and pitch a few notes to the Democratic National Convention.

Mickey ("Toy Bulldog") Walker, 46, who used to be middleweight and welterweight champion of the world, won the job of sports editor of the Police Gazette.

Lana Turner, who was suspended last fortnight by M-G-M for refusing 'to play the freewheeling Milady de Winter in The Three Musketeers, changed her blonde mind and was gratefully welcomed back.

Arthur W. ("One-Man Army") VVer-muth, who moved from wartime heroism to peacetime girl trouble to obscurity, reappeared in the news on skates, looking like a one-man hockey team (see cut). He was now taking a flier at goaltending for a semi-pro team in Wichita.

That Old Feeling

Britain's royal honeymooners, Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, were finally granted their allowances after some House of Commons scolding (TIME, Dec. 29): -L-40,000 a year for her, -L-10,000 for him.

Gold-mine Heiress Nancy Oakes de Marigny sued to annul her 5 1/2-year-old marriage to Count Alfred de Marigny, who was acquitted in the Bahamas in 1943 of bludgeoning her father to death. Her charge: he was never validly divorced from his first wife.

California finally granted Mrs. Ray Hendricks a final divorce decree, but would not recognize her as Mrs. Leo Durocher until another ceremony was performed. Meanwhile, her legal name would be Loraine Johnson Hendricks, but moviegoers would call her Laraine Day. Laraine and Leo thought they might legalize themselves on the Coast late in February.

In West Palm Beach, Fla., Nancy Rheem Talbot filed suit for separation from Playboy Husband Johnny. After a night out with Lana Turner, she charged, he had told her: "Go home to your mother." In Manhattan, Cinemactress Arline Judge, whose fifth husband, Bob Topping, succeeded Talbot as Lana's friend, wasn't holding still for a divorce. "It'll take me a long time to ruin this one," she raged to the New York Post's Earl Wilson, "but. . . I swear on my baby's head, I'll ruin him for what he did to me."

In the Red

Dirigible Pioneer Hugo Eckener, who was in the U.S. last year talking dirigibles with experts, was fined 100,000 marks by a French zone denazification court. The charge: membership in the Nazi party, wartime profiteering.

Charles Chaplin Jr., 22, was fined $150 in Beverly Hills, Calif, for drunken driving, escaped a 30-day jail sentence by promising to go on the wagon for a year.

Elmer ("Bud") Linderman, world's champion rodeo cowpuncher last year, was fined $25 in Denver for people-punching in a nightclub.

* He was probably thinking of Guiding Light; Road of Life is on at 10:30 a.m.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.