The Working Class

Henry Agard Wallace, whose much-publicized project for planting corn on the tiny lawn of his Park Avenue headquarters struck a lot of people as right off the cob, changed his mind. He settled for gladioli, and set foot to spade for photographers.

Sculptor William Zorach, whose thickish handiwork stands in eight leading U.S. museums, got an offer from the state of Mississippi, turned it down the same day. No, he would not carve a monument to the late Senator Theodore G. ("The Man") Bilbo; he "could not face the world" if he did--and, offhand, he wasn't able to think of any sculptor who could.

Painter Winston Churchill was doing all right: three of his paintings (Blenheim Tapestries; Goldfish Pool, Chartwell; The Blue Sitting Room, Trent Park) were accepted for this year's Royal Academy exhibition.

Hirohito, heretofore better known for his poetry, completed an 80-page, illustrated monograph on sea slugs.

Pink-haired Van Johnson was up & around again five days after an attack of gastroenteritis sent him to a Hollywood hospital.

Edward William Spencer Cavendish, enormously wealthy 10th Duke of Devonshire, faced a period of inactivity as High Steward of Cambridge University, now that the House of Commons had voted to suspend the death penalty. Disclosed the Duke: "My only known duty as High Steward"--which he had never performed in ten years--"had been to attend the hanging of any undergraduate."

Missing: $39.60 belonging to Clarissa Churchill, Winston's niece, now visiting Manhattan for the first time. Clarissa looked at the meter in a cab, saw the figure 40, handed $40 to the driver, who softly thanked her and quickly drove away.

Received by Joseph Stalin, from the glassworkers at the Sklara Poremba factory (who are either brave or humorless) : a crystal ball. Stalin shot it along to the Museum of the Revolution.

GREAT DAYS

In Windsor, Princess Elizabeth and her parents celebrated her 22nd birthday with a family luncheon and dinner.

In London, a weekend that blossomed with flags and bunting reached full flower as George VI and Queen Elizabeth rode in state from Buckingham Palace to St. Paul's and back. The occasion: their silver wedding anniversary. The King and Queen (and Princess Margaret) rode in a gold and crimson coach behind the household cavalry and full-dress Guards, helmeted and plumed, on jet horses. After them came a coach with Elizabeth and Philip. Salutes were fired; cheering crowds jam-packed the sidewalks.

In White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., the Duke of Windsor also took honors of a sort. He was by far the sportiest of a sartorially splendid foursome. His competition: British Cinemagnate J. Arthur Rank, ex-Senator Burton K. Wheeler and Railroader Robert R. Young.

FAMILY AFFAIRS

Ex-Bestseller Kathleen Winsor and ex-Bandleader Artie Shaw, who spent many noisy months getting thoroughly divorced from their old mates and thoroughly married to each other (TIME, Nov.11, 1946), decided after 18 months that things were impossible. The trouble, according to a formal announcement of their separation, was just "a disparity of interests"--but "they remain on the best of terms . . ."

Winthrop Rockefeller and blonde bride "Bobo," the ex-Most-Eligible-Bachelor and the Year's No. 1 Cinderella--who were married on St. Valentine's Day--said they were expecting a baby next November.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Poet-Dramatist T. S. Eliot, who is working on a new play, explained all about it to a reporter who asked what the subject was. "Why, you see," said Eliot, "in the play I study the relations of certain characters with other characters and of certain characters with themselves."

Poet Laureate John Masefield straightened out some Manhattan eighth-graders who had written him asking the correct version of Sea-Fever's opening line. "The line was first printed: 'I must go down,' etc.," he said. "After about 20 years I altered this to 'I must down,' etc. But after about another 20 years I repented and put 'go' back. And now, alas, I cannot make up my mind . . ."

"I never read plays," George Bernard Shaw told Broadway Producer Jean Dalrymple. "I think it is a very bad idea for a playwright to read plays. If the play is good he is bound to be influenced by it and even to steal something from it."

The Maharaja of Kapurthala's daughter inlaw, Princess Brinda, preparing to return home, looked back on the winter in Manhattan, submitted a visitor's impression to a New York Post reporter. "New York men and women," said she, "are lovelorn, forlorn, and emotionally torn. The men don't understand their women, and the women don't understand their men." Solution? "I suggest that your husbands and wives sit together silently in meditation for at least one hour a day."

Amelita Galli-Curci, famed opera star of the '20s, turned up at the Met opening in Los Angeles, surprised a lot of people who had heard little of her for years. Still tiny (shoe size: 2 1/2B) and bubbly at 58, she confided to an interviewer the secret of her durability as a star (1909-30): "I didn't force my voice. I had sense enough not to touch the capital, only the income . . ." For the past eleven years she has been living quietly in an ornate Los Angeles mansion with her husband, Singing Teacher Homer Samuels, and plans to move to a new country home near San Diego when it is finished. She has taken up painting. What does she think of opera today? "Music is an art," she says. "It's not a yelling business, or a ballyhoo business. It was an art the way we used to do it. Today, I'm afraid it is different . . . It may be that the whole thing is due to the times. The times are hysterical and yell-y."

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