In legal preliminaries to get a tangible remembrance from the estimated $100 million-plus estate of Philanthropist Vincent Astor, portly half brother John Jacob Astor III, ignored in Vincent's will (TIME, Feb. 16), informally entered a surprise argument. Its gist: thrice-married Playboy J.J. needs the money. Turning his coffers inside out just before sailing for England, J.J., doubtless aware that the bulk of Vincent's money is earmarked to "alleviate human misery," complained that he is down to his last $5,000,000.

Two prominent young women had a fleeting encounter by night on a highway leading into London. After sleek limousines had played tag at speeds up to 80 m.p.h., Britain's Princess Margaret and France's Cinemorsel Brigitte (Girl in the Bikini) Bardot, halted briefly at a traffic light, stared curiously at each other through the cars' side windows. When they raced onward, the royal limousine took a commanding lead. Purred Sex Kitten Bardot, who first met the princess at a command film performance two years ago: "I don't know if she knew me, but she looked at me very hard."

A London newspaper reported that German-born Atom Spy Klaus Fuchs, in a British prison since 1950 for passing scientific secrets to the Russians, has been asked by Britain's government to plunge right back into his original line of work (theoretical physics) after he is sprung next June. Fuchs, according to the report, would take his talents, and presumably his refurbished loyalties, to Canada.

Almost 30 years after he last boomed through the title role of Othello in England, Actor Paul Robeson, 61, was the tormented Moor again at the Shakespeare Memorial Theater, opening the 100th season of the mecca in Stratford-on-Avon. Free to roam since his eight-year U.S. passport ban was lifted last June, Fellow Traveler Robeson got an ovation from the audience, almost unanimous huzzahs from the critics, but his Desdemona, blonde British Actress Mary Ure, was rapped for her lack of pathos.

The White House announced that Sir Winston Churchill will make an "informal" U.S. visit with Old Friend Dwight Eisenhower next month. The trip was postponed a year ago after Sir Winston came down with pneumonia. Earlier last week Cigar Chomper Churchill, about to fly home to England from the French Riviera, jauntily puffed on a cigarette, a rare indulgence for him, but he was back on big black stogies by the time he reached London Airport.

Bouncing into view before some 2,000 University of California at Los Angeles students, Elder Statesman Harry S. Truman, 74, sprang a surprise on his listeners: U.C.L.A. has offered him a short-term regents' lectureship and "When I get here, you may be sorry!" On another whistle stop in Los Angeles, Campaigner Truman, addressing some rapt businessmen, looked ahead to 1960, backhandedly nominated Vice President Richard Nixon as his own preferred G.O.P. White House aspirant: "I hope [the Republicans] don't bury him until after the next election. He'll be the easiest to lick!"

Descending airily from a plane at New York International Airport, the Soviet Union's greatest ballerina, Galina Ulanova, smiled at her initial brush with U.S. regulations when a customs inspector confiscated a small red Russian apple found in her luggage (Red apples are forbidden fruit). Fulfilling a 35-year ambition of persistent Manhattan Impresario Sol Hurok to bring Moscow's celebrated Bolshoi Ballet to the U.S., Ulanova, a feather-footed 49, will lead the dancers in their Western Hemisphere debut this week at the Metropolitan Opera House. Greying and fragile, mohair-coated Ulanova, fresh from snowy Moscow, sampled Manhattan's balmy 70DEG weather, pronounced it zharko (hot).

On an unlikely impulse, Long Island Housewife Barbara Roth, circulating a nonprofit "Good Luck Prayer" chain letter that had come in the mail, sent copies to Russian Author Boris (Doctor Zhivago) Pasternak, TV's Jack Paar, Authors Vladimir (Lolita) Nabokov and Alexander (Mine Enemy Grows Older) King. She got no replies from the three U.S. celebrities but did get a handwritten answer in English from the reluctant rejecter of last year's Nobel Prize for literature. Wrote Pasternak: "It is not the habit in U.S.S.R. to make circulate such sendings, but I won't break the chain and so I return immediately the text of the Prayer to you to forward it in other directions. B. P. . . ." Glowed Mrs. Roth: "It was like casting a crumb on the water and getting back a strawberry shortcake!"

Tooling down a terrestrial canyon near Hollywood at the helm of a Jaguar, TV Actor George Reeves, beloved to millions of kiddies as indestructible Superman, hit an oil slick, piled into a stone wall, suffered a mild concussion and a nasty gash on the forehead. Climbing out of his crashed earth vehicle, Superman fainted.

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