As a sideline to her own profitable biological filmflam, tangle-maned Cinemactress Brigitte Bardot agreed to join Producer Raoul Levy in an undertaking of pith and moment: a series of educational movies designed to help the West "understand" the backward nations of Asia and Africa. To the regret of those piqued by the prospect of Bardot among the Zulus, Filmaker Levy decreed that swivel-hipped Brigitte's contribution would be limited: cash, but no carriage.

During Christmas week. Pope John XXIII kept up his no-nonsense disrespect for hoary papal traditions, left the Vatican to beam his gentle pastoral smile on those who perhaps needed it most--invalid children in a Rome hospital, convicts at the grim Regina Coeli prison, where one inmate asked his help in getting an amnesty from the government. "I'm afraid that's out of my competency," replied the Pope. "I don't know what influence I might have in getting the government to grant an amnesty." Then he added: "But I have some influence in a much higher place, and perhaps you might be interested in an indulgence."

Fiery Diva Maria Callas, her flames fairly well banked, rested in Milan before filming some jovial chit-chat for CBS Pundit Ed Murrow's TV talkathon, Small World. Meanwhile, back at her lawyers' office, things were less restful. Already soprano non grata at Milan's La Scala and Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera, litigious Maria tossed a damage suit against another offending management: the Rome Opera House, which sacked her a year ago (TIME, Jan. 20, 1958) after she walked out after the first act of Norma pleading a "lowering of the voice." With a hint that a suit of their own was in the wings, the Rome management curtly dismissed the latest Callasuit: "Ridiculous."

The book-loving Soviet public, reported Moscow radio proudly, had gobbled up every copy of a new edition of the works of Mark Twain. Included in the twelve-volume set, which will be published over the next three years: unnamed, unspecified "anti-imperialist pamphlets," not found, claimed the broadcast, in the decadent, bourgeois editions published by Twain's countrymen.

At a Hollywood premiere, Director Vincente Minnelli laid a proud parental hand on the young shoulders of daughter Liza, 12, strikingly close to being a doe-eyed, wonder-struck replica of her mother, Songstress Judy Garland Luft.

For another year, Eleanor Roosevelt was the living woman most admired by the nation, as sounded out by Pollster George Gallup. Runner-ups to Mrs. Roosevelt (a ten-time winner in the poll), this year as well as last, were Queen Elizabeth and Clare Boothe Luce. In fourth place: Mamie Eisenhower, sixth in popularity last year. For the seventh time, the pollees ranked President Eisenhower as the most admired living man, trailed by Sir Winston Churchill, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Evangelist Billy Graham and Harry Truman, who slipped from last year's third spot. Newcomers to this year's list: Vice President Nixon and Arkansas' Governor Orval Faubus.

Togged up like a leftover from Hans Brinker, oracular Democratic Senator Hubert Humphrey relaxed in triumph after his headline-grabbing junket to the

Soviet Union (TIME, Dec. 22), plied his lacemanship prior to a trial spin on the ice near his home in Waverly, Minn.

Stepping out of a Manhattan taxi, Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, president of the Methodist Church's Council of Bishops, slammed the door shut, unwarily slammed the edge of his overcoat with it. When the cab pulled away, Oxnam was felled, his head striking the curb. Momentarily knocked unconscious, the bishop was taken to the hospital with a fractured left arm and facial cuts.

With just the right touch of respect for his elders, Comrade Nikita Khrushchev, 64, wafted eastward a friendly birthday message for Comrade Mao Tse-tung, 65, hailed his "untiring and many-sided activities in leading the heroic struggle of the Chinese people and the Chinese Communist Party."

A plaintive entry in the Yule log at Honolulu police headquarters: a crew of canny thieves got into the sumptuous home of venerable (76) Multycoon (steel, cement, jeeps, aluminum) Henry J. Kaiser, filched a $500 watch and a sackful of other expensive trifles from underneath the Christmas tree.

The plea from son David, 12, was soulful and wide-eyed, so Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver ambled outside for a look. There, smart as paint, stood a neighbor's new, factory-built scooter (equipped with a 2 1/2-h.p. engine) that David wanted in trade for his old, homemade soapbox racer. Brightly, the Keef decided that he'd better take a ride--just to make sure the deal was fair and square. Democrat Kefauver, all of 6 ft. 3 in., hunched himself in, buzzed off down a hill sporting the widest of aha-the-voters smirks. Soon learning that momentum cannot be legislated, he reached for the brake, found none, in desperation napped a leg gingerly over the side. That slowed the racer, but a senatorial foot was bent under a wheel, and over went the bug, Keef and all. Shaken by his joy ride, the Senator checked in later at Bethesda (Md.) Naval Hospital, where the medics plastered a cast around badly sprained ligaments, a dislocated kneecap. Obvious upshot: no racer for young David.

Turning 25, Japan's slender, donnish Prince Akihito downed green tea and bean cakes at a sedate trio of parties (one with his kin, another with Fiancee Michiko Shoda, a third with 60 old classmates at Gakushuin University), tentatively accepted a birthday gift designed to cement the bonds between the budget-conscious imperial family and a local construction firm: an offer to build the foundations and outer shell (cost: $150,000) of Akihito's new, 45-room palace for a kowtowing $27.78. Apparently more concerned with imperial honor than with imperial bargains, however, Tokyo's noisy newspapers uncorked howls that the bid was an "insulting courtesy." Result: the canny offer humbly withdrawn, no cut-rate building bill for the Finance Ministry.

Building further their brothers-under-the-greenbacks camaraderie, ardent Art Fancier Averell Harriman, Democratic Governor of New York, offered to Republican Governor-elect Nelson Rockefeller, an art lover even more ardent, a token of no hard feelings: the loan of eight etchings and two oils by James Abbott McNeill Whistler and one oil by John Singer Sargent for Rockefeller's use in the executive mansion.

Lest accusations of normality fall about her column-conscious ears, deep-breathing Cinemactress Jayne Mansfield revealed the joys of a California Christmas. Her gift, from Muscleman Mickey Hargitay: a finny new pink Cadillac. Jayne's present to Mickey: a red and white Christmas stocking, bulged out with 9 Ibs. 9 1/2 oz. of their newborn (Dec. 21) son Miklos.

The tidy little gardens of verse periodically raked up by Poetot Minou Drouet have nurtured some singularly muse-smitten responses: by the latest count, the lady's Christmas mail included some 20 proposals of marriage. Lest any readers be tormented by life imitating Lolita, the daily Paris-Journal solemnly presented reassurance: petite Minou, 11, has rejected her suitors, one and all.

Proud of the boss for his work on the President's proposed $77 billion budget for fiscal 1960, the staff of Budget Director Maurice Stans teamed up, gleefully gave him a football jersey, symbolically labeled (in black) "77."*

* The numeral's best-known bearer: the University of Illinois' famed Galloping Ghost, Harold ("Red") Grange, who--alas for symbolism was rarely contained by any lines.

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