Kisses for Two

Two petite, grey-haired women journalists had a date this week at Paris' Quai d'Orsay. With a glass of champagne and a kiss on each cheek from Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, they would be formally made knights of the Legion d'Honneur. For both Genevieve Tabouis, famed political columnist of France-Libre (circ. 115,000) and Janet Flanner, famed "Genet" of the New Yorker, the kudos was overdue.

Reporter Tabouis, first French newshen to win the Legion's cross* and its little red ribbon, might have had her decoration twelve years ago. In 1936, her appointment had been approved by Leon Blum, then premier. But a few days before the ceremony his own paper, Le Populaire, attacked her as a secret supporter of Franco. So Mme. Tabouis wrote an angry letter telling Blum that she "was not accustomed to being caressed and beaten by the same hand, and didn't want to be decorated."

Wrong Guesser. In 24 years of reporting, including stints for Hearst's tabloid New York Mirror, "Aunt Genevieve" has hung up a few scoops, and a record array of wrong guesses. Her daily routine includes interviews with diplomats every forenoon, and phone calls to "well-informed friends" in London and Geneva every evening. In her elegant Right Bank apartment, she has three telephone lines and a phone in every room.

Last week the Communist weekly Action kidded her in a comic strip about Genevieve Cambouis, Clairvoyante, who excused herself during an interview to rush to Moscow and thrust a microphone under Stalin's table.

Wrong Guess. Indiana-born Correspondent Planner, 56, had not waited so long for her glass of champagne. She was honored last year for her painstaking, 25-year effort "to explain France to the Americans," but missed the presentation ceremony.

Invited to the Quai d'Orsay while preparing to visit New York, "Genet" decided to skip what she thought was just a social reception. When she walked in on New Yorker Editor Harold Ross in Manhattan a few days later, he greeted her sourly: "I see you have got the Legion d'Honneur, and I don't think too highly of it."

*Bought by the recipient, it costs anywhere from $15 to $360, depending on the size of its diamonds.

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