The Air Is Filled with Music

Louis ("Satchmo") Armstrong, king of jazz trumpeters, went back home for a brief reign as King of the Zulus at New Orleans' Mardi Gras. Buttoned into an outlandish red velvet tunic, and brandishing a silver scepter and a fat black cigar, Satchmo began his triumphal tour at 9 in the morning. Rumbled gravel-voiced Louis as he settled himself on the throne on his gilded float: "Man, this is rich." The parade stopped before the Gertrude Geddes Willis Funeral Home, and the royal party dismounted for a light lunch of turkey and ham sandwiches, pickles, olives and champagne. By the time Satch had clambered back on to the float and settled down with three bottles of champagne at his feet, he felt moved to announce: "This king stuff is fine, real fine. It's knocking me out--I've blowed my top." Blowed it he had. When the King failed to show up and blow his horn at the Zulu Ball that night, his Duke explained: "Man, that old Satchmo done drunk up all the champagne in this town."

Red-haired Ballerina-Cinemactress Moira Shearer (The Red Shoes) hustled offstage after a concert in Edinburgh and paid her respects to Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh without stopping to change costume. She thus demonstrated beautifully that all curtseys to royalty should be executed by ballerinas in short ballet skirts.

In Manhattan for an Overseas Press Club dinner in his honor, George C. Marshall was asked to name a couple of favorite songs. Singer Jessica Dragonette bypassed one choice, Rock of Ages, sang his other favorite, Buttons and Bows.

After seven exciting weeks of hunting big game in East Africa (bag thus far: five lions, 38 assorted wild critters), beefy Tenor Lauritz Melchior had a narrow squeak. The Metropolitan's veteran dragonslayer fired as a charging Cape buffalo came at him, fired again & again & again, finally dropped the one-ton beast less than ten feet away.

After 2 1/2 spicy months in the tabloids, Ferruccio Tagliavini, 35, robustious Metropolitan Opera tenor, was adjudged, by a 2-1 decision, the father of a 17-month-old girl, whose mother is an enthusiastic brunette music lover named Mary Phillips, 28. The court ordered Tagliavini to pay $25 a week for the baby's support. The outraged tenor, for almost eight years married to bouncy Met Soprano Pia Tassinari, denied everything and announced that he would appeal. Said Miss Phillips: "I'm so happy for baby . . . She needs new shoes." But the trial had taught her bitterness, too. "As far as men are concerned," she announced, "I'm through. Men--their tactics and deceitfulness! Even my ex-husband testified against me."

Lee J. Cobb, impressing Broadway with his depressing portrait of Willy, the hero of Death of a Salesman, was promoted to star billing, with his name on the marquee. Star Cobb, just back from five years of playing supporting roles in Hollywood, called it "the most rewarding experience of my professional life."

Pravda worked out one of its fine diplomatic distinctions. It called Old Soldier Walter Bedell Smith, U.S. ambassador to Moscow, a "professional spy." On the other hand, ECAmbassador W. Averell Harriman, who once had Smith's job, was merely a "spy by avocation."

Pope Pius XII passed his 73rd birthday and his tenth year as Pontiff, hard at work, made no official observance of the occasion.

Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, 92, hero of Verdun in World War I, and head of Vichy in World War II, now living out his days on the He d'Yeu in the Bay of Biscay, was due for a change. After giving him a routine checkup, his doctors urged his jailers to give him easier living conditions, and cut out all his strenuous menial duties (e.g., cleaning up his own room).

Westbrook Pegler was on the receiving end of a blast. Representative Arthur G. Klein (Dem., N.Y.) cried that such "scatological skill . . . could spring only from a sick mind." Klein urged the formation of the Westbrook Pegler Annual Award of Journalistic Infamy, with the nomination committee to include the poundmaster and chief plumbing inspector of the District of Columbia, and the prize plaque to be "a rectangular shield transversed by a double cross, surmounted by a turkey buzzard . . . with jackal couchant in the left upper quarter and the symbolic figures of Truth and Decency outraged supine in the lower right quarter."

Anna Louise Strong, 63, back in Manhattan after getting kicked out of her beloved Moscow, collapsed from "complete physical and nervous exhaustion," had to postpone her scheduled appearance before a federal grand jury investigating espionage.

King George VI, 48, sat in an armchair at a formal investiture, while 300 people filed by him in the ballroom of Buckingham Palace. It was his first full state ceremony since his ailing leg began acting up last November.

Golfer Ben Hogan, 36, who broke pelvis, collarbone, ankle and rib in an auto crash five weeks ago, had an abdominal operation to clear up a "critical" blood clot condition. He was reported in "good condition" after the operation, but it would still take him a couple of months to fully recover from the fractures.

Actor Alfred Lunt, 55, had to call off eight Milwaukee performances of the touring I Know My Love to nurse an acute peptic ulcer.

Yvette, chic French begum of the portly Ago Khan, came down with what her secretary called "just a little lumbago." She joined her husband for the weekend in the Paris hospital where he is recovering from an operation.

Representative Hugh D. Scott Jr., 48, chairman of the Republican National Committee, took a header in the shower, landed in the hospital with a wrenched back.

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