Change of Pace

In Paris, a blonde authoress-movie director, Nicole Vedres, was shooting a film with an all-star cast: Painter Pablo Picasso, Novelist Andre Gide, Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, Architect Le Corbusier, Writer Jacques Prevert, Atomic Scientist Frederic Joliot-Curie. Their roles required them to enact themselves at work and at play, chatting about what the world was coming to. Said Picasso, who played quiet scenes with Gide (see cut) and mugged with Prevert: "We had a terrific time."

With the lights doused by a storm and his wife about to give birth, Notre Dame Football Coach Frank Leahy, 41, urgently called two doctors to his Indiana home. They arrived to find that Leahy, working by candlelight, had already safely delivered the Leahy's sixth child, fourth boy ("a fullback, I think"). The coach's critique: "If you think a football game is exciting, you should have been at our house last night."

Having decided last spring that Knowsley Hall, the old family seat, would have to pay its own way, the Earl of Derby cheerfully counted up $22,000 in public admissions over the summer to the 400-year-old showplace in Lancashire (Price scale: "adults, 50-c-; children, 25-c-). "Next year," promised Lord Derby, "I shall reduce the charge for children."

Broadway Matinee Idol Ezio (South Pacific) Pinza, 57, had something new to put him farther ahead of the theater's other romantic leads: his first grandchild, a boy, born to his daughter, Metropolitan Opera Soprano Claudia Pinza, 24.

In Cooperstown, N.Y., Baseball's Hall of Fame conscientiously wrote to Philadelphia Phillies First Baseman Eddie Waitkus for the .22 slug that an overenthusiastic girl fan fired into his lung in June.

Lorenzo ("The Magnificent") de' Medici had cause to be restless in his grave: a go-getting U.S. real-estate agency took a full-page ad in Town & Country offering bourgeois buyers the sumptuous Villa Medici that he built overlooking Florence in 1460. Asking price: $150,000.

Retired National League Umpire Bill Klem, 75, smitten by his share of oaths and pop bottles in almost 50 years of calling decisions, was on the receiving end of a new kind of demonstration. At a Polo Grounds ceremony arranged by baseball writers, damp-eyed Bill Klem caught a broadside of cheers and gifts from fans, players and managers.

Slings & Arrows

After threatening suicide from a locked hotel room which she had fortified with a large supply of sleeping pills and a bottle of whisky, Whodunit Authoress Craig (Home Sweet Homicide) Rice, 41, had an explanation for the cops: it was all just a plot twist to win back her estranged fifth husband, Henry W. De Mott Jr., 29, whom she was suing for divorce. "It was a foolish thing to do," she admitted, "but sounded like a good idea at the time."

In Cannes, while his great & good friend, Hollywood's Merle Oberon, 38, watched his private plane take off for Venice, wealthy Italian Count Giorgio Cini, 30, was killed in a crash when he flew low to buzz the airstrip. Cinemactress Oberon cried: "My life is finished. There's no point in going on."

In her McCall's memoirs, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt painfully recalled a couple of bad moments when King George and Queen Elizabeth were being entertained at Hyde Park in 1939. In the middle of dinner, a serving table collapsed under a load of extra china. As the clatter stopped, Mrs. James R. Roosevelt (a stepsister-in-law), who had lent some of her plates for the occasion, muttered: "I hope none of my dishes were among those broken." The same evening, the memoirs added, "just after we had gone down to the big library after dinner, there was a most terrible crash as the butler, carrying a tray of decanters, glasses, bowl of ice and the like, fell down . . . and slid right into the library, scattering the contents . . . and leaving a large lake of water and ice cubes . . ."

On the Go

Laborite Prime Minister Clement Attlee and Tory M.P. Anthony Eden

managed to share a conclusion, though they remained miles apart. Attlee took a ride in a submarine and fired a torpedo. Eden took a ride in a jet plane at more than 500 m.p.h. Said Attlee: "I thoroughly enjoyed it." Said Eden: "I thoroughly enjoyed it."

Contralto Marian Anderson sailed back from her first European concert tour since 1938 with a bright new trophy which she could add to her collection of honors: the Finnish government's Order of the White Rose.

When Massachusetts' Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. breezed into Paris on a visit, the U.S. embassy lost no time in setting up a press conference. The press turned up dutifully, but after a few minutes of no questions, the Senator grew bored staring at the newsmen (see cut) and, wondering aloud why the conference had been called in the first place, set his silent interviewers free.

Greta Garbo, 43, stole out of Florence and into Rome, where she will reportedly make her first film in eight years. In Florence she ordered some wardrobe items: 70 pairs of hand-made shoes, mostly low-heeled (size 7-AA).

With her son Nicky, 5 (see cut), the Met's Rise Stevens traipsed triumphantly across Europe, collecting offers of long-term contracts from the Vienna State Opera and Milan's La Scala. But Paris gave her the choicest compliment: a request (which she graciously obliged) to cut short her vacation and give a few extra performances of Der Rosenkavalier because no French mezzo-soprano would risk following her in the role.

Matter of Opinion

Margaret Truman roused a flurry in the Missouri legislature, where faithful Democrats had just pushed through a bill making her father's theme song, the Missouri Waltz, the state anthem. To a St. Louis interviewer who wanted to know if she would sing it during her concert tour, Margaret confessed that she got sick & tired of listening to the tune at every whistle stop during the presidential campaign. Said she: "I don't care if I never hear it again."

Drama Oracle George Jean Nathan, longtime professional heretic, got religion of a sort. He was enrolling intimates in a new cult called "Immunism." It still needed some working out, explained Nathan with missionary fervor, but the idea was to get immunized against just about everything, starting with politics.

Onetime Heavyweight Boxing Champion Jack Dempsey began a career as a movie producer with a short jab at Hollywood for "putting crooked stuff about sports in the movies." The Manassa Mauler promised that he and his two producing partners would set things right by making films showing boxing and other sports as "a clean, honest game." He added: "We may even do the Jack Dempsey story."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.