Doing his bit to whoop the boys up for the annual damn-the-Democrats exercises at Lincoln's Birthday fund-raising ceremonies. Republican National Chairman Meade Alcorn polled G.O.P. Senators on how many philippics they could unload at party rallies this year, learned to his mild horror that a bipartisan clerk had mailed one query astray. Bemused recipient of the inadvertent, fire-eating "Dear Frank" appeal: Utah's new Democrat Frank E. Moss.

David Goldbogen, brother of the late Cinemogul Mike Todd, last week had an eye-boggling idea for dressing up the plot in Forest Park, Ill., where Mike's body lies. The proposal: a 9-ft.-tall, 2-ton, $8,000 marble statue of filmdom's Oscar, which Mike won for Around the World in 80 Days (still busy at the box offices). No inscription would mar the marble, said David, adding thoughtfully: "We would want to keep the memorial simple." But at week's end Hollywood's Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences warned that rights to reproduction of the Oscar are strictly forbidden, and no exceptions will be made--even for Mike.

For "his zeal, charity and genuine love of people" and his "noble thoughts against racial antipathy and creedal strife," the influential English-language weekly Jewish Advocate (circ. 30,000) tabbed as its man-of-the-year Boston's lanky, brisk Richard Cardinal Gushing.

Jaunty and rakish despite some uncharacteristic makeup (for one of his rare TV appearances in a filmed mellerdrama), veteran Hoofer Fred Astaire, 60, shared a grin on the set with misty-eyed Daughter Ava (she pronounces it Ah-va), 16, who with Daddy's encouragement studies drama at her tony Hollywood finishing school, does her lab work in local amateur theatricals.

Pothered by an ache in the jawbone, weedy Pianist Van Cliburn dropped in on a Tucson dentist for some overdue drilling, canceled all concerts until the throb in his ivories dwindled to a pianissimo. Mumbled Van, his gift for hyperbole undiminished: "I'm thrilled to death it happened here, in the land of the sun."

All set to outdo his previous exploits as a canny hooker of the skittery bonefish (the Miami Chamber of Commerce once cited him for landing an unusually healthy 13-pounder), ex-President Herbert Hoover, 84, relaxed aboard a yacht after his arrival in Florida with gee-whiz approval of his first jet ride: "It's a true revolution in air travel. It's going to make a great change in the American scene."

Nailed on his 16th driving rap after he pranged a bystander's auto, quirkish Artist Lucian Michael Freud, grandson of Sigmund, was fined $14 by a London court. Said the magistrate, frisking the long record of Freudian slips: "You are temperamentally unfitted to drive a car. I think you'd better see a psychiatrist."

Agog with glory after his fast tour as a "freelance newsman" trailing Fidel Castro's rebels in bar-bereft Cuba, where his trained eye zeroed in on the local frails, thirsted mightily for a stiffer mode of life ("Water to me is undrinkable"), and scribbled notebooks full of tidbits for a biography of Hero Fidel ("We're on a first-name basis"), paunchy Cinemactor Errol Flynn, 49, swashbuckled into Manhattan to praise his friend. "I've admired this man for at least two years," said Flynn, leaning heavily on the Disneylandish bar (fuchsia with pink lights) in his apartment. "There aren't many idealists left." But back in Havana, thoughts of "Reporter" Flynn, author of two barely remembered novels, seemed less idealistic. Morals-minded Castro followers joked at the memory of his roistering coverage, and one dark-eyed rebelista murmured: "We are more than happy to meet newspapermen we respect, but as to Mr. Flynn, we had the feeling he was not a real journalist."

Proffering neither judicial explanation nor evidence of displeasure, Chief Justice Earl Warren resigned from the American Bar Association. Mused one surprised A.B.A. official: "I can't figure it out. I think the American Bar Association has been very kind to the Chief Justice."

Some 40 champions from a bevy of sports were in the crowd of 400 that stood cheering in Los Angeles last week as genial, handsome U.S. Decathlon Champion Rafer Johnson, 23. SPORTS ILLUSTRATED'S Sportsman of the Year for 1958, got to his feet to accept his award. In shy dignity, Johnson, California Negro who last July in Moscow scored an astounding 8,302 points to win a tense, ten-event duel with Russia's Vasiliy Kuznetsov, thanked his parents for "making it all possible," added quietly: "I have but one goal in life: to live like an American."

In Philadelphia the University of Pennsylvania's President Gaylord P. Harnwell pondered the pixyish offer from a local lawyer and his clients to put up $500,000 for an endowed professorship of taxation, finally announced that his school had no intention of honoring the name of the late Mobster Al Capone with this particular chair.

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