Monday, Jan. 09, 1956

Names make news. Last week these names made this news:

Weary of trying to plumb the future with mere logic and female intuition, Washington Political Gossipist Ruth Montgomery pilgrimaged to the crystal ball of an uncanny lady named Jeane Dixon, an amateur seeress-astrologist whose predictions have often become next year's headlines.*What Jeane told Ruth: Ike will be re-elected next year, and "he will run the Government like you would run a big business," delegating many duties to ease the strain on his heart. His "Assistant President" will be Thomas E. Dewey. Adlai Stevenson's timing is all wrong; he is a political dead duck. New York's Democratic Governor Averell Harriman also will never be anything more than a guest in the White House. Same for Tennessee's Senator Estes Kefauver, who might be Vice President some time, but should have checked his big move until 1960. In that year, the candidate of a labor-controlled Demo cratic Party will be elected President. His Democratic successor in 1964: Labor Chieftain Walter Reuther. As for Richard Nixon, Jeane Dixon doesn't "know why the Democrats hate him so, because he is riding a terribly high planet ... is an instrument for good [and] will become a very real power in our Government."

Gadding about California with time out to watch some rocket tests, roughhewn Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson put on his dinner jacket one evening and showed up in Pasadena at the coronation ball honoring Pasadena City College coed Joan Culver, 18, new queen of the Tournament of Roses, which adds to the hoopla of the Rose Bowl football game. In the vanguard of the traditional mammoth parade through Pasadena this week, "Engine Charlie" Wilson rode in a flossy, rose-festooned convertible as the procession's grand marshal.

In her New Year's honors list, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II rewarded 702 Britons for their services to the Crown, produced only one surprise: no peerages to Laborites. Elevated to the Order of the British Empire: veteran (64) Thriller Spinner Agatha (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd) Christie; famed Sadler's Wells Ballerina Margot Fonteyn, 36; ailing, highbrow Author Sir Osbert (Wreck at Tidesend) Sitwell.

With a legal mulligatawny already simmering over the will of the late, eccentric Publisher (Physical Culture, Liberty) Bernarr Macfadden (TIME, Oct. 24), the present boss of the $5,000,000 Macfadden Foundation (set up by Macfadden in 1931) claimed that there is much astew about nothing. Noting an $18,000 federal claim for back taxes on Macfadden's es tate, Foundation President Edward Bodin stated the sad tidings: "He was actually broke, as he claimed, before he died. Judging by investigations so far, it is unlikely that the estate of Bernarr Macfadden will be able to meet the burial costs and legal expenses."

When widowed Vice President Alben W. Berkley took handsome Widow Jane Hadley as his wife six years ago, two 14-year-old youngsters became moonstruck, were photographed passing up the wedding luncheon delicacies. Instead, they devoured each other with shy lamb eyes.

Last week, at another wedding luncheon, the two were at it again, but this time the festivities were for them. Beaming over the victuals were Army Corporal Thomas Hulen Truitt, 20, grandson of Kentucky's Barkley, and his dark-eyed bride, Jane Everett Hadley, 21, daughter of Jane Barkley. After a fortnight's honeymoon, the newlyweds will hop to West Germany, where Corporal Truitt's service hitch will end in June. In the genealogical tangle created by the new family tie, Tom Truitt clearly got the happiest break: his severe mother-in-law is also his lovable step-grandma.

Most of Broadway's brightest names turned out in regiment strength at Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel to hail Theater Grandame Helen Hayes, 55, on the soth anniversary of her first stage appearance. In the grand finale, while Actress Hayes listened with proud Victorian regality, everybody on stage serenaded her with an affectionate rendering of The Way You Look Tonight.

The biggest target under Air Force sights since the Korean armistice, Alabama's overblown (248 Ibs.) Governor James E. ("Kissin' Jim") Folsom, whose pleasure sortie in a National Guard plane to a Texas football game drew fire from the Pentagon (TIME, Dec. 12), called off a similar mission he had scheduled for New Year's Eve. Determined to take in the "Gator" Bowl game in Jacksonville, Fla., Kissin' Jim had planned to launch a grandiose air armada on the pretext of "inspectin' " the runways at a Jacksonville airport. By last week he had reconsidered, decided instead to forgo the aerial junket in favor of rolling down the road a piece in Montgomery for the annual Blue-Gray (North v. South) Bowl game. Drawled Kissin' Jim jovially: "But I reserve the right to inspect them Jacksonville runways at any time."

*Among Prophetess Dixon's successful long-range auguries: Franklin D. Roosevelt's death in the spring of 1945, Truman's re-election in 1948, Bulganin's displacement of Malenkov as U.S.S.R. Premier, the Eisenhower landslide in 1952, and Ike's illness in Denver last fall.

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