Personal Preferences

As Britain's Philosopher Bertrand Russell reached 80 this week, the New York Times asked the usual question, got a variation of the usual answer: "I have, I suppose, lived a wholesome life, avoiding every kind of excess and taking abundant exercise. Until the age of 42 I was a teetotaler. But for the last sixty years I have smoked incessantly, stopping only to eat and sleep . . . I have never, except when I was ill, done anything on the ground that it was good for health. I eat what I like and don't eat what I don't like, even when I am told that dire consequences will follow. They never do."

Cinemactress Joan Crawford burbled happily to Chicago reporters about her first independently produced picture, Sudden Fear: "It's wonderful to be casting myself. For 20 years I have been a gangster's moll. At last I am wellborn. I'm a novelist, yes, a successful novelist. You don't think I'd play an unsuccessful novelist in my first picture, do you?"

Back to Washington for a visit, after winning the Democratic nomination for Senator from Ohio, wisecracking Mike Di Salle was asked whom he would like to see heading the Republican ticket. His answer: "For selfish reasons I'd like to see them nominate Eisenhower. I can see Ike & Mike clubs springing up all over Ohio."

In Cincinnati, Sob Singer Johnnie (Cry!) Ray, 25, confirmed the worst for his bobby-sox fans: he plans to marry Marilyn Morrison, 22-year-old daughter of a Hollywood nightclub owner. Explained Johnnie: "She's the first girl who ever made me feel like a man."

A Tokyo newspaper polled its readers to learn what foreigner they respected the most. Result: 395 votes for Douglas MacArthur; 327 votes for Abraham Lincoln.

Dim Views

In Ottawa, Parliament heard that books by Joseph Stalin and Mae West had been barred from Canada. Typical objectionable works: Joe's Questions of Leninism and Mae's Diamond Lil.

Against the protest of both Author Thomas Mann and his publisher, an East German publishing house in Berlin printed an edition of Buddenbrooks. The Communists' defense of their literary piracy: "Thomas Mann is a German author and his work therefore belongs to the German people. He who, by any means whatsoever, tries to keep this work from part of the German people is an enemy of the German people."

During a visit to their old friend, Illinois' Governor Adlai Stevenson, British Diplomat Sir Gladwyn Jebb and his wife climbed into an ox-drawn cart for a tourists' tour of Lincoln Village in New Salem. The tour ended when the driver lost control of the oxen and the cart lumbered into a big tree, leaving the passengers shaken but undamaged. Said Sir Gladwyn: "I think we got out rather luckily considering that this has been our first try at midwest sightseeing."

In Washington, after Nancy Kefauver had transcribed a story for a children's radio show (from Winnie-the-Pooh in which Pooh learns all about bees, much to his discomfort), she retired for a real siege of storytelling at the Kefauver home, where three of her four children were recovering from the discomforts of mumps.

Paths of Glory

In Tucson, Dr. Irving Langmuir, Dean of Rainmakers, reported that his cloud-seeding program over New Mexico had influenced weather patterns across the country. Said he: "If you set up a road block on a busy highway and stop all cars for ten minutes, let them through for ten minutes, and then stop them again for ten minutes, you will have influenced the flow of traffic for hundreds of miles in either direction from the road block. That's what we did with the weather for 21 months." Furthermore, said he: "There can no longer be any valid doubt as to the success of cloud seeding."

Actress Eva Gabor explained why she had spent $3,600 for new clothes to wear for 30 minutes twice a week on a midnight disk jockey stint for a Manhattan radio station: "You have to look beautiful to sound beautiful."

Denmark's King Frederik, who is also hereditary Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal East Kent regiment, arrived in England to dedicate a new window which his regiment gave for the Warriors' Chapel of Canterbury Cathedral. Before the ceremony, photographers snapped a rare meeting of King and prelate in hearty handshake as Frederik was greeted by the Very Rev. Hewlett Johnson, the party-lining "Red Dean" of the cathedral.

The American method of treating visiting celebrities seemed to astonish Austria's Chancellor Leopold Figl, who, arriving at the White House, had to face still another crew of cameramen. Said he to his host: "When people come to the U.S., they think they are coming to a democracy, but it is a photocracy."

At a party which he gave in Washington, Governor Thomas E. Dewey met an old Albany friend, Leo W. O'Brien, onetime newspaperman who was recently elected Democratic Congressman from Albany. O'Brien, veteran of many a Dewey campaign trip, greeted the governor with a special song: "He took the high road and I took the low road, and I was in Washington afore him."

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