Quiet, Please

John Jacob Astor III, globular 35-year-old great-great-grandson of the original, was recuperating on his New Jersey estate from a case of measles.

Princess Margaret, her measles all gone now, was off to a wedding.

Orson Welles, 33, sent his old school (Todd, in Woodstock, Ill.) his regrets at not being able to attend the school's centennial celebrations. He was abed in Rome with chicken pox. "Think of it--at his age," murmured the headmaster. "Still the boy wonder."

Cinemactress Peggy Cummins, who wears a four-leaf-clover charm, skidded on a highly polished floor, landed on the charm, cut her pretty hand.

Cinemactor Ronald Reagan took a fall, landed hard, busted his coccyx.

Show Business

Cecil B. DeMille, Hollywood's colossal historian, had not lost his touch as he cast his upcoming masterwork, Samson and Delilah. For the girl he hired Hedy Lamarr; for the boy, Victor Mature.

Gene Autry prepared to make some cinema history himself. He was about to attempt a picture entirely without his horse.

Governor Dwight Green of Illinois was having a case of actor's nerve. Aware that the Republican Convention would be televised, the silver-haired keynoter tiptoed into a television studio and tried on some faces. He tried eyebrow pencils, lipsticks and Pancake Make-up (neither Max Factor 23 nor Max Factor 29 was quite right, but Max Factor 28, a nice healthy brown, looked wonderful on the handsome governor). Thinking it all over, he settled for a fast barbershop tan.

Senator Owen Brewster of Maine got a nibble from Hollywood the day after he made a speech attacking Planemaker

Howard Hughes, one of the targets of the old War Investigating Committee. "I hereby offer you a job as a motion picture actor," wrote Producer Hughes, new boss of RKO, "at a salary of $300 a week. This is twice the usual starting salary, but you are no amateur . . ."

Public Acclaim

The week's least surprising ovation was accorded in Asbury Park, N.J., where Music Boss James Caesar Petrillo was elected president of the American Federation of Musicians, for the ninth time.

In Paris, Philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau was top man at one of the richest autograph auctions in Paris history. A Rousseau manuscript fetched 4,230,000 francs. A batch of letters from Voltaire brought 330,000; one letter from Beethoven, 116,000; one from Descartes, 48,000. For a letter from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with a bit of verse in it: 7,200.

In London, one of the King's Birthday Honors finally went to 75-year-old Poet Walter De La Mare, myth-&-mystic immortal, who became a Companion of Honor. Novelist Elizabeth Bowen became a Commander of the British Empire. William Gilliatt, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (who had just been named attendant specialist to Princess Elizabeth), got a friendly vote of confidence when he was made a Knight Bachelor.

The Duke of Edinburgh, who turned 27 last week, not only got the Freedom of the City of London, but was admitted to membership in the City's Worshipful Company of Fishmongers. He was also appointed a personal aide-de-camp to his well-known father-in-law.

In The Bronx, Babe Ruth put on his old uniform for the last time: in a homeplate ceremony at Yankee Stadium the uniform was formally presented to the Hall of Fame and National Baseball Museum at Cooperstown, N.Y., and the Bambino's celebrated old number 3 was officially retired, never again to identify a Yankee.

In Munich, a denazification court gave 84-year-old Composer Richard Strauss a clean bill of health: all he had done while the Nazis were in power was stick to his unpolitical music.

At West Point, to Hoyt Jr., a rock-jawed plebe, went a fountain pen and a rock-solid handshake from Air Force General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, '23, who has come a long way since then but still looks a little like a plebe with his hair slicked down (see cut).

In West Los Angeles, the entertainment committee of the U.C.L.A. freshman class opened the summer silly season with a selection of the prettiest male legs in U.S. public life. Among the winners: Presidential Assistant Clark Clifford, Violinist Yehudi Menuhin, Winthrop Rockefeller, and Reporter Alfred Kinsey.

Private Lives

Puckered Bernarr Macfadden, 79, settled down at his Physical Culture Hotel in Dansville, N.Y. for a delayed honeymoon with his blonde bride Jonnie, 42, who showed newsmen her current reading assignment: How to Attain and Practice the Perfect Sex Life. "I can't imagine anything more exciting than being married to Bernarr Macfadden," said she, "can you?"

Actress Elsie Janis, 59, "Sweetheart of the A.E.F." in World War I, and Actor-Husband Gilbert Wilson, 42, decided to call it quits after 16 years.

Governor James E. ("Kissin' Jim") Folsom, defeated in the Alabama primaries, suffered another setback; a judge refused to dismiss the paternity suit against him, ordered it tried on its merits.

Myron C. Taylor, the President's august envoy to the Vatican, also had child trouble. Undaunted by a court defeat last year, a Mrs. Eunice Walterman of Chicago re-entered her claim that she was his illegitimate daughter, this time sued for a round $2 million.

Former Major General Benett E. ("Benny") Meyers, now doing 20 months to five years for the lies he told the Senate investigating committee about his aircraft business, was sued for $250,000 by Mrs. Mildred R. Lamarre, his brunette ex-secretary, for the lies she says he told about their friendship.

Worldly Goods

In London, Lady Astor, as determinedly dry as the late "Pussyfoot" Johnson, auctioned off some gin to raise funds for a memorial to a friend. She peddled the treacherous stuff at $60 a bottle. But her conscience was presumably at ease, since she began her pitch with a rousing temperance lecture.

In Nashville, Alvin C. York, No. 1 U.S. hero of World War I, went to court to get back $7,454.44 in income taxes he had paid early in World War II. He had discovered, said he, that his life story (which he sold to the movies for $50,000) was a capital asset.

In Los Angeles, Frank Stranahan, big-muscled British amateur golf champion, slipped out of bed, selected a No. 3 iron, drew back for a long approach shot, and thus persuaded a burglar to stand still and be good till the police came

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