Like a professor on a field trip, Gypsy Rose Lee completed a swing through Europe, exposing herself to new trends in the arts. "In London," said Gypsy, "it is called the Paris striptease. In Paris, it is the American striptease. And in Vienna, it is the London striptease. I guess they're all trying to pass the blame."

The East German Central Institute for Atomic Physics chose a new deputy director at a salary of $20,160 a year. German-born, British-trained, with unique experience in his field, he was the obvious man for the job: Communist Spy Klaus Emil Fuchs, 47, onetime head of the theoretical physics department at Britain's Harwell Atomic Energy Research Establishment, who slipped atom-bomb secrets to Russian agents, was caught and imprisoned in 1950. Released 2 1/2 months ago, Fuchs flew to East Berlin, was made a citizen of East Germany almost as soon as the wheels hit the runway.

Showing up in Atlantic City, N.J. to talk before an Israel Bond rally, Novelist Leon Uris (Exodus, Battle Cry), 35, recalled his record at Philadelphia's Bartram High School, said he had flunked English three times and was about to register flunk No. 4 when he enlisted in the Marine Corps. To Uris, who recently signed a contract with Columbia Pictures for four sight-unseen novels, the matter was merely academic, but "it's a good thing English has nothing to do with writing."

In Independence, Mo., Harry S. Truman, 75, and Jack Benny, 65, shuffled their scripts, studied their lines, rehearsed for a forthcoming Jack Benny Program on TV. Mingling laughs with instruction,

Benny and Truman will show U.S. citizens where to go to study the history and philosophy of the U.S. presidency: the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence. "I'm doing it for Jack Benny and nobody else," said Truman, explaining that last year Benny had got out his violin to help "pull the Kansas City Philharmonic out of debt." As for the present show: "We want to keep it dignified," said Benny. "And we are," said Truman. "I'll kill myself if it isn't," said Benny. "All right," Truman punch-lined, "I've got an undertaker friend."

Determined, like her cousin Queen Elizabeth to bind the British commonwealth by charm, blue-eyed Princess Alexandra, 22, made her first official visit without her mother, the Duchess of Kent, to an overseas dominion--Australia. After spending three weeks trudging up and down the continent, she demonstrated her famed light touch by taking off her shoes to walk barefoot across the sands of Lindeman Island, off Australia's east coast.

On a Hollywood set, Actor-Singer Pat Boone, 25. took a swift kick at what seemed a papier-mache rock, but he should have taken it for granite. The rock was real. Boone broke a toe.

Milk? "I get 750 gallons a year per cow," said Ukrainian Farmer Fedor Kozlovsky. "Not bad, but I'm doing better than that," said British Farmer Nye Bevan, who, with fellow Laborite Hugh Gaitskell, had turned up in the Soviet Union to reap some of the summer's bumper crop of Russian-grown political hay. "But you weren't overrun by Hitler," said Fedor. Said Nye: "Those were not cows that were overrun by Hitler."

Debarking in Manhattan after a summer in his native Yugoslavia, Sculptor Ivan Mestrovic, 76, told of a visit he had paid to a lifelong friend: Aloysius Cardinal Stepinac, 61, prisoner of the Tito regime (either in jail or under close surveillance) since 1946. The cardinal is in "good spirits and fairly good health," said Mestrovic. Had the cardinal been tortured? "No."

Working a long engagement as "vice president in charge of fun" at Santa Monica's Pacific Ocean Park, sad-eyed Clown Emmett Kelly took a sad-eyed view of his profession. When they were still the greatest shows on earth, he moaned, big-time U.S. circuses had billets for something like 1,000 clowns, but the survivor, Ringling Bros., now uses only about 35. "The kids don't see any future in clowning," said Kelly, but he had a fourth ring up his tattered sleeve. "There is a new field that offers possibilities. That's the shopping center. Entertainment for those neighborhood centers is getting to be a big thing. I'm thinking of getting up a unit to tour them."

Eva Margareta Hagerty, 30, daughter-in-law of Presidential Press Secretary James Hagerty, went to court in Alexandria. Va., walked out a U.S. citizen. Daughter of a Swedish minister, she arrived in the U.S. in 1951, went to work as a governess in the home of a Swedish U.N. delegate, married Marine Lieut, (now Captain; Roger Carl Hagerty in 1955, is the mother of Jim Hagerty's two grandchildren.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.