Young Ideas

After a decade of giving her top billing in his movies, Herbert ("Papa") Yates, 72-year-old president of Republic Pictures, signed a new contract with his favorite cinemactress, Vera Hruba Ralston, 31, onetime Czech skater. He quietly escorted her to Burbank and bought a marriage license.

The Duke of Edinburgh enjoyed his first ride in a jet aircraft: a 72-minute, 500-m.p.h. test flight over southern England and the Channel. The plane: British Overseas Airways' new Comet airliner, designed to launch commercial jet travel this spring between Britain and South Africa.

With her old friend Drucie Snyder Horton, daughter of the Treasury Secretary, and an escort of six Secret Service guards, Margaret Truman arrived in Malibu, Calif, for a two-week beach holiday and some personal appearances. For the radio, she chose the operetta Sari, in which she played the daughter of a gypsy fiddler; for television, she started rehearsing as the friendly foil of Comic Jimmy Durante.

Some sons of well-known fathers were getting their names in the news:

Spring turnout for the varsity baseball team at Princeton included Thomas E. Dewey Jr., 19 (pitcher), and the pollster's boy, George H. Gallup Jr., 21 (catcher). In Manhattan, James W. Symington, 24, son of the retired RFC head and a law student at Columbia University, picked up a contract to sing in the Carnaval Room of the Sherry-Netherland Hotel. Said Tenor Symington: "I'm paying my spring tuition with what I get here." Nicholas Eden, 20, son of Britain's Foreign Secretary, left Oxford and arrived in Ottawa to begin his new job as aide to Governor General Vincent Massey. He was, he said, "a summer sports man. I don't ski or skate, but I expect to enjoy my visit to Canada very much."

Past Masters

Eleanor Roosevelt received an honorary Litt.D. degree from the University of Delhi, and a compliment from former U.N. Representative Sir Senegal Rau. Said he: Indian visitors to the U.S. are impressed by two things. "First is Niagara Falls, and second is Mrs. Roosevelt."

Evangelist Billy Graham, 35, arrived in London to conduct his own special blitz against sin. An audience of over 7,000 filled Albert Hall to hear his sermon. The Graham theme: "I am absolutely convinced that we are living in an hour just before the judgment of God strikes." His score for the first evening: seven converts.

In Copenhagen, Denmark's King Frederik, who is proud of his muscular, tattooed torso and sailing skill, displayed his talent with the baton. At a private concert for family, friends and diplomats, he conducted the Royal Danish Symphony Orchestra through Mozart's Symphony in G Minor (No. 40) and Weber's overture to Euryanthe. Among those who listened and applauded: famed British Conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent.

In Princeton. N.J., Albert Einstein ignored his 73rd birthday. Said his secretary: "He doesn't care about his birthday at all. He won't even have a birthday cake."

Nurse Sister Kenny, who announced last year that she was suffering from Parkinson's disease and would spend the rest of her life in Australia, told Sydney reporters that she now feels well enough to plan a two-month trip to the U.S.

Hard Lines

In London, J. B. Priestley heard that an overenthusiastic admirer, after reading that Priestley "longed for the sun and soil of Arizona," was air-expressing him a shoe box full of the state's soil. Grumbled the novelist: "I would have preferred citrus fruit."

After an attack of sciatica cut short his U.S. concert tour, Britain's explosive Sir Thomas Beecham flew home to London where he was trundled through customs in a wheelchair. His plans? Said Lady Beecham to reporters: "He's going to do what I tell him for a change." Fumed Sir Thomas: "I've always done what she tells me. Marriage is one of the subtler forms of tyranny--imponderable but effective."

In Madrid, the Duchess of Valencia, shapely, 36-year-old monarchist critic of Franco, suggested that her country's diplomatic corps needs a woman's touch: "I would not be surprised if Stalin's trouble is the lack of feminine influence over him. I think a woman might be able to accomplish far more with him than the Western statesmen have been able to do. I wish I could be Spanish Ambassador in Moscow . . . If I were Spanish envoy in the United States, I would go fishing with President Truman . . ."

The Danish Foreign Office announced that it would officially protest the Hollywood story of Hans Christian Andersen starring jittery Comic Danny Kaye. The Copenhagen newspaper Politiken quickly added its support: "Reports from Hollywood indicate that the cobbler's son from Odense, Denmark, shall now be known to history as the singing and dancing hero from a $4,000,000 Technicolor show. Is it really permitted to distort the life of great men in such reckless manner?" Danny's considered opinion: "I think the people of Denmark will like the picture. I don't do any scat singing."

PERSONALITY

BEN HOGAN, the professional golfer, is a man of tremendous composure and no small talk. He has been known to go an entire 18 holes without once speaking to his caddy. A golfer playing with him just about has to hole out with a brassie from several hundred yards away before Hogan is moved to say, "Good shot." Other pros, the kind who get sick at their stomachs and take to Benzedrine during big tournaments, are not anxious to play in his threesome. His presence, silent and austere, makes them tense up and miss shots. The thing few people suspect is that Ben Hogan is twice as tense as any of them.

He is like a man plugged in on a busy switchboard. Lights keep blinking and flashing in Hogan's brain, carrying danger signals from his nerves and muscles. When the switchboard is really busy--as it will be on April 3 when Hogan plays in the Masters Tournament at Augusta, Ga.--he deliberately shifts himself into a state in which people blend into the landscape like so many trees or blades of grass. Opponents actually believe that he has learned how to control his heartbeat and regulate the flow of juices from his thyroid and adrenal glands.

It is this physical domination over himself --or his belief in it--that enables Hogan to do things on a golf course that baffle human understanding. At 39, he needs no warm-up tournaments to toughen his nerves and sharpen his game. He just shows up for the big ones, sets the machinery in motion--and wins. Then he drops out of sight again, leaving behind another "miracle" for the Hogan legend.

In the interims Hogan can be found playing the grass-roots circuit, making one-day stands in small towns against local hotshots. Wherever he stops he draws a crowd. His poise on such occasions is perfect. He urges folks to edge in closer, and when everything has become intimate and relaxed he begins telling them how to play golf in one easy lesson. "There's not much to playing this game," he lies genially. After spieling off a few tips about grip and stance, he belts out a few balls. "See how easy it is?" he asks finally, and all the onlookers nod. Then, after playing an exhibition match against local pros, he takes a bow, signs some autographs and departs. His fee for the afternoon's work is a flat $1,500.

THE ingredients that Hogan uses are not available to everybody. Some of them are hereditary, handed down from his Irish father, who plied his trade as a blacksmith in Dublin, Texas. Some of them come from his early environment. After his father died (when Ben was nine), he had to fight for everything--including his job as a caddy--and he got used to fighting. The mechanics of his golf came hard. Hogan had little natural talent for the game and was left-handed to boot; in overcoming these handicaps he built up patience and selfdiscipline.

When Hogan became the game's most successful player--topping all comers in prize money for five seasons--he still lacked some ingredients. He could not leave his work on the golf course, but let his passion for perfection rule his whole existence. His keen eyes noted such minute details as the fact that one knob on a hotel bureau drawer did not match the other. His finicky palate rebelled at restaurant food from Kalamazoo to California; unless a steak was cooked just so, back it would go to the kitchen. Only in his treatment of Valerie, his wife, did he show a gentle side.

The last and perhaps the most important ingredient in Hogan's stew was one the fates added. It happened when he was 36, on a lonely stretch of road in Texas, the night a Greyhound bus crashed head-on into his Cadillac. As he lay in Hotel Dieu hospital in El Paso, down to about 105 Ibs., he had plenty of time to meditate--about the past, the present and the hereafter. When Valerie talked with him during visiting hours, the subject of golf was never mentioned. Asked by a newspaperman if he would ever play again, Hogan answered vaguely, "I just don't know. I don't know what it's done to my nerves."

What had happened to his legs was worse. He had suffered two embolisms, and to prevent a third and perhaps fatal clot from reaching his lungs, the doctors permanently tied off the large veins in his legs. Whether he would be able to walk again depended on whether he could stand the excruciating pain when the smaller veins began to carry the extra load.

For the first time in his life, Ben Hogan's remarkable will power was beamed at something less tangible than hitting a golf ball. Back home in Fort Worth, bandaged from hip to ankle, he began the prescribed exercises. He insisted on removing and replacing the bandages himself because, after a little practice, he felt he could do it better than the doctors.

He embarked on his first few toddling steps, painstakingly worked up to a complete circuit of the living room. After several months, when he had managed 15 times around the room, Valerie would ask him jokingly, "How many laps today?" It was better to laugh about it, they decided, than hang out a wreath.

HIS accident was ten months old the day he announced casually that he was going over to the club to hit a few golf balls--and would Valerie like to go along? She watched while Ben swung and shanked one off to the right like a Sunday duffer. "Look, I've shanked," cried Hogan, and his wife exclaimed, "Well, you've learned something new." That night they celebrated with a steak dinner.

It was miracle enough that Hogan ever came back to tournament golf. But it was stranger still that he came back a more polished performer than before. He had his old game plus a new frame of mind. Winning tournaments did not seem so important any more, and were therefore easier to win. But it took guts to do it on legs that ached while he was on the fairway and hurt even worse at night. They had never ached so badly as one day in Philadelphia in June 1950. He stumbled into his hotel room and sank into a chair. That day he had gone 36 holes at Merion to tie for first place in the U.S. Open, and now his legs were swelling and tightening with cramps. Hogan tried to sleep that night but it was no use. Since he is allergic to painkilling drugs, his only recourse was to draw a hot tub of water and sit in it. He drew one tub, sat in it a while, then drew another tub. He got no sleep that night. At the club next day he put elastic bandages on his legs and walked purposefully to the practice tee. He hit a couple of balls with each club in his bag. Then he went out and beat Lloyd Mangrum and George Fazio to become U.S. Open champion.

BEN HOGAN is not likely to worry about where his next meal is coming from for some time. A good businessman, he has money coming in from tournaments and exhibitions. Over & above that, he collects an annual levy from the Greyhound Bus Corp. (an estimated $25,000 a year for ten years) as a result of his accident.

He is getting paid by a sporting goods company for the use of his name on golf equipment, and money for endorsing Chesterfield cigarettes (which he chain-smokes on the golf course but seldom smokes off it). He owns a couple of oil wells, a one-sixth interest in the new $2,000,000 ranch-type Western Hills Hotel near Fort Worth, and next winter he will run the posh new Tamarisk Country Club at Palm Springs, Calif., where he is building a home overlooking the third tee. Other golfers find themselves dreaming of the day Hogan will find a nice green pasture for himself. It seems to be their only hope of getting a real shot at one of the pig tournaments. Like a mulligan stew, Ben Hogan just seems to get better & better the longer he simmers.

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