Lost & Found

Princeton's President Harold W. Dodd's offered a Chicago audience a new label for the troubled times. Said he: "Americans once called it the Engineering Age, but it has become the Phenobarbital Age because of the national anxiety neurosis which has developed through lack of spiritual values in life and education . . . The fatalism with which people talk about the future of the Republic, the amount of time and money devoted to 'hot rod' pleasures, the level of current standards of sex relations, and the immoderate use of alcohol as an escape or as a crutch--these are the symptoms of the nation's deficit in nonmaterial things."

In Santa Monica, Producer Walter Wanger, husband of Cinemactress Joan Bennett, decided against a jury trial and threw himself on the mercy of the court. Last December, convinced that Actor's Agent Jennings Lang had more than a 10% interest in his wife and was breaking up his home, Wanger sent Lang to the hospital with a bullet in the groin. Since Lang appeared to be recovering nicely, the court considered the mercy plea, reduced the charge (shooting with attempt to murder), and sentenced Wanger to four months, with a recommendation that the time be served on the county honor farm or on a road gang.

With the help of Riviera sunshine and a heart specialist, the ailing, 75-year-old Ago Khan felt well enough to leave his villa in Cannes, go for a drive with the Begum, and make plans for an early visit to the U.S.

The British Museum persuaded the Duke of Gloucester to part with a rare first edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for $3,696. The Duke's volume is one of the few remaining of the 2,000 original copies withdrawn after printing in 1865 because Lewis Carroll objected to the reproduction quality of the Tenniel illustrations.

Hither & Yon

Back home after 20,000 miles of lecturing in the U.S. for the British Information Service, Lord Lawson, a former coal miner elevated to the peerage by the Labor Party, described a few quaint American eating habits: "Americans kill you with kindness . . . and with their cooking. Their meals are too big. They eat to live, not live to eat. But I go crazy over their coffee and waffles."

After a lecture in Chicago ("My guardian angel was a nonsuccessful psychoanalyst in life"), Welsh Poet Dylan

Thomas refused to go through the ordeal of answering audience questions. Why? Because, he said, they always follow the same vapid pattern: "Are the young English poets really psychological?", or "I always carry Kierkegaard in my pocket. What do you carry?"

In Tokyo, the horsy set dressed up and headed for the royal paddocks on the Imperial Palace grounds to compare social notes and the finer points of riding at the annual exhibition. Among those present: Mrs. Matthew B. Ridgway, trim and tailored (and soon to be notified of a change of residence--see INTERNATIONAL), who shared a front-row view with Jockey-for-the-Day Crown Prince Akihito.

In Capri, Raimonda Ciano, 18-year-old daughter of the late Count Galeazzo Ciano, and granddaughter of Benito Mussolini, announced her engagement to Sandro Guinta, 23, a blood descendant of Napoleon.

Nods & Becks

On a visit to the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, England, the Duke of Edinburgh agreed to match wits with an electronic brain in a game of ticktacktoe. The Duke lost.

In London, an enthusiastic audience filled the Palladium to applaud 68-year-old Sophie ("Last of the Red-Hot Mammas") Tucker on the 30th anniversary of her first appearance in Britain. Next morning the critics added their cheers. Said the News Chronicle: "She is as irresistible as a steam roller. She is Miltonic as well as Rabelaisian; for she is full of 'nods and becks and wreathed smiles' and is the personification of 'sport that wrinkled care derides.'"

In Buenos Aires, Eva Peron, the bejeweled and much-decorated First Lady of Argentina, graciously accepted still another honor: the Syrian Order of Ommayyad.

The National Institute and American Academy of Arts and Letters announced the award of its Gold Medal for History and Biography to Pulitzer Prizewinner Carl (Lincoln) Sandburg.

Onetime Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Owen J. Roberts was elected president of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. Among the new members chosen at the meeting: George F. Kennan, new U.S. Ambassador to Moscow; Sir Charles Darwin, grandson of the evolutionary theorist and Illinois' Senator Paul H. Douglas.

From her villa on Capri, old Music-Hall Trouper Gracie Fields, a temporary victim of rheumatism and a bride of two months, announced that the British army had arranged for her to make an early summer singing tour of Korea. Would, her radio-tinkering husband Boris go along? Not likely, said Gracie, he is a stateless person without a passport. Besides, "he can't sing."

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