After Due Consideration

Andrei Gromyko, back for the new U.N. session with a new title (Chief Deputy Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union) looked like the same old deadpan Gromyko. "I could smile," he growled at clamoring photographers, "but it would be artificial."

Frank Leahy, as pessimistic as ever, opened Notre Dame's spring football practice. "We'll have the worst team Notre Dame has ever had," moaned the coach of the mighty Irish, undefeated for three years. "We'll lose seven games."

Francisco Franco, Dictator of Spain, observing the tenth anniversary of his Civil War, had words of modest reassurance for his followers: "You must stick closely together, confident that he who led you so many times to victory is wholly conscious of his duty and will never desert his post of honor."

Ernst Reuter, Lord Mayor of Berlin, visiting in New York, reassured the West that "We in Berlin never talk of war. We know there will be no war . . . Our common aim is only peace." However, "we live much too near the Soviet paradise to want to be incorporated."

Droop-eyed Cinemactor Robert Mitchurn, out on good behavior after serving 50 days of a 60-day stretch for conspiracy to possess marijuana, considered his carefree days in poky: "I had privacy there. Nobody envied me, nobody wanted anything from me. Nobody wanted my bars or the bowl of pudding they shoved at me through the slot." But things would be different from now on for the actor who had been a $3,250-a-week idol of U.S. bobby-soxers: "I'm typed--a character. I guess I'll have to bear that all the rest of my life."

"I don't like acting," declared Robert Morley, winding up a six-month personal triumph in Edward, My Son. "Good actors act to live, they don't live to act. The keener somebody is to act, the worse actor he is. It's not a sacred calling, acting."

"I've always wanted most of all to write plays," confessed Novelist Betty Smith (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Tomorrow Will Be Better) to an interviewer for Vogue, "but I've never been able to get on Broadway. The novel is like a good, steady provider ... the kind of fellow you can marry, who is ready to settle down . . . while the theater--that's the handsome guy who's a lot of fun, but you'd be a fool to marry him, the bum."

Old Sweet Song

"We were never quite married," explained Walter Surovy, manager-husband since 1939 of handsome Met Mezzo-Soprano Rise Stevens. "We had a marriage certificate and tore it into pieces . . . We decided to remain in a state of courtship . . . We have violent fights and make violent love."

In Hollywood, Cinemactress Judy Garland, after four years and one child, announced the breakup of her second marriage, to Director Vincente (The Clock) Minnelli (No. 1: Composer David Rose). Said she: "I'm very sorry, but it's true; we're happier apart."

In Savannah, Novelist Kathleen (Forever Amber) Winsor got married to Arnold Krakower, the lawyer who helped her get the divorce last December from husband No. 2, Clarinetist Artie Shaw.

In Paris, Rita Hay worth watched Aly Khan finish next to last in a horse race for gentlemen jockeys (gibed the railbirds: "Trop d'amour"). She also announced that they would get married "within four weeks. I wish it could be sooner," she added demurely, "but we have to wait."

The Arts

Pablo Picasso, 67, leading post-impressionist and a founder of cubism, was seriously dabbling again in realism. For Paris' Communist-sponsored "World Congress of Partisans of Peace," scheduled for later this month, he had painted a dove of peace that looked just like a dove. The bird, trilled Communist L'Humanite, was "vital and soft. Its plumage shines and drives back the shadows."

Ingrid Bergman, about to start work on a new movie on the island of Stromboli, took time off to take in the sights of Rome. Her guide through the ruins: Director Roberto Rossellini.

Philip Wylie, raucous critic of contemporary U.S. folkways (Generation of Vipers, An Essay on Morals), had thought up the title for his new book: Opus 21; Descriptive Music for the Lower Kinsey Epoch of the Atomic Age--A Concerto for a One-Man Band--Six Arias for Soap Opera--Fugues, Anthems and Barrelhouse.

The Realities

Princess Margaret, 18, growing up to shoulder more & more of royalty's responsibilities, appeared in Bristol for a straight-faced inspection of some naval cadets. Passing down the line with a solemn escort, headed by the Lord Mayor in full regalia, she managed to brighten an otherwise somber picture (see cut).

Anna Louise Strong, frustrated apologist for the Soviet Union, even after the

Soviet Union kicked her out as a spy, was still suffering frustration: the eleven U.S. Communists on trial in Manhattan, flatly rejecting her offer of $1,000 for their defense, called it "a shabby promotion scheme."

Over the boss's objections, the C.I.O. United Auto Workers bought an $11,600 armored Packard sedan for Walter Reuther, who still wears a sling around his right arm, shattered by a shotgun blast a year ago.

Two months after he broke pelvis, collarbone, ankle and rib in an auto crash, Golfer Ben Hogan was driven to the El Paso railroad station, and wheeled to the train. He managed to walk the length of a Pullman car by himself and settled down for the 16-hour trip back home to Fort Worth.

Finnish Composer Jean Sibelius, 83, called off his trip to the U.S. because "my health will not permit . . ."

Bernard Shaw, 92, applying for a two-year membership in the London Vegetarian Society, slyly suggested that the rules be amended--just this once--to make his -L-1 fee good for his lifetime.

Hairy-chested Novelist Ernest Hemingway, 49, on a hunting and fishing trip in Italy, drove into Padua for treatment of a shiner. He explained, briefly, that he had "run into an oar.

Ex-Communist Victor Kravchenlco won satisfaction of a sort from the pro-Communist Paris weekly Les Lettres Franc,aises, which had charged that he never wrote I Chose Freedom and that it was full of lies anyway. Victor sued for three million francs ($10,000). After weeks of lurid courtroom charges and countercharges, the judge ordered the weekly to pay the court a 15,000-franc ($50) fine, pay Kravchenko 150,000 francs ($500) damages, and print the court decision on its front page.

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