Playwright Arthur Miller, husband of Cinemorsel Marilyn (Some Like It Hot) Monroe, wished aloud that the public would pay more attention to her lines and less to her curves. Said he: "She would not have lasted so long except for her genuine acting ability." As a case in point, he referred to Marilyn's forthcoming stardom in a Nevada-made movie titled The Misfit, written especially for her by Playwright Miller. "When this film is finished, everyone will recognize my wife's ability."

Doing a six-month stretch in Tennessee's Davidson County workhouse on an inciting-to-riot rap, Yankee Segregationist John Kasper, 30, fresh from a five-month respite in federal stir for contempt of court, was contemptuous of his treatment by the feds, laudatory of his local jailors. Observed he: "You know exactly what is expected of you at the workhouse. You eat, sleep and work, and that's about all of it. The federal system has too many bureaucrats. I always had the unexplained sense of great eyes watching me. And they go in for psychological brainwashing." At the moment, Kasper was laboring with three other prisoners, collecting litter and offal on county roads. Allowed one of his guards: "He'll pick up a dead dog quick as anybody."

Brooding over the possibility of a woman as U.S. President, a New York Post columnist recalled that a Maine constituent once inquired of doughty Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith: "What would you do if you woke up one morning and found yourself in the White House?" Senator Smith's tart reply: "I would apologize to the President's wife and go home."

Not since the 11th century, when its owner, Macbeth, murdered King Duncan in his sleep, had there been such anguish at stately Glamis Castle in the chilly hills of Scotland. A fire broke out in an uninhabited wing, was extinguished by the local fire department before it engulfed the cozy apartments where Queen Elizabeth once romped, Princess Margaret was born, and the Queen Mother's family have lived for some 600 years. The Earl of Strathmore, the castle's present guardian, tried to brave the flames to rescue his Labrador puppy, then thought better of it.

The puppy was sitting outside with the crowd, watching the fire.

Although few Negroes are inclined to take direct action when their race is slurred, sultry Songstress Lena Home, dining in a Hollywood restaurant with her white husband, Musical Director Lennie Hayton, took umbrage when a nearby patron voiced an insult at the singer and her race. Pretty Lena responded with drumfire--a hurricane lamp, some dishes and three ashtrays. Her startled detractor wound up with a gash over his eye. By the time cops arrived, cooler heads had prevailed, and no charges were brought by either side.

Two little girls, 9 and 11, saucily tossed their blonde curls in the Dallas bookstore and shrilled into song: "How much is that book in the window?/ The one that says all the smart things./ How much is that book in the window?/ I do hope to learn all it brings!" They were plugging a novel titled Alpaca, a weird pitch for Utopian plutocracy authored and published by their daddy, Oilman H. L. Hunt, 71, long the fearless Big Daddy to many a far-right crusade (Wisconsin's late Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, Facts Forum, radio's current Life Line program).

As Novelist Hunt sees it, the ideal state's biggest taxpayers should be its biggest voters. The real fat-cat taxpayers would each get seven votes, the lower 40% brack-eteers only a vote apiece. But Author Hunt defends his system not as plutocracy but as incomeocracy: "It is the taxpayer who gets the bonus, not the rich man . . . It's like a corporation: the greatest stockholders have the greatest votes." In Alpaca, it all comes out like this: " 'Will you help me further this plan for just government? Will you do me the honor of working with me . . .?' 'Yes, Achala,' Mara promised." Heart Specialist Paul Dudley White replaced the myth of youth with some hard facts. Middle age begins at 20 and lasts until 80, he announced somberly in Boston. The dangerous years of this 60-year spread are not the last 20 but the first.

It is then that overfed and underexer-cised Americans are sowing the seeds of a coronary harvest. How to plow under this crop? Get more exercise. Dr. White, 73, walks miles each day, rides a bicycle, and in winter shovels snow.

Stonefaced, Italian-born Gambler Frank Costello, 69, lost one more foothold in his fight to stay on U.S. soil. The U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a year-old federal court order stripping him of his citizenship because he called himself a real estate dealer instead of a bootlegger, when he was naturalized in 1925. But Costello will probably not go anywhere for a while: he is still serving a five-year sentence for evading more than $28,000 in income taxes.

Fighting her way through a blizzard from New York to a Pittsburgh speaking date, Eleanor Roosevelt, a lively 75, first had her plane land in Columbus, then dauntlessly hopped a bus for a 200-mile last lap. After the bus was delayed by a traffic jam and snowdrifts, Pennsylvania state police rescued Mrs. Roosevelt but did not get her to Pittsburgh until hours too late. Losing no more time, she caught a train back to Manhattan. How had she whiled away her time on the snailish bus? "Waiting to get there."

After taking 60 driving lessons, West Germany's Bundestag Vice President Carlo Schmid, 63, soloed through the streets of Bonn in a Mercedes-Benz 220. His adventure ended when he mistook his foot throttle for the brake, piled into the Alt Heidelberg beer hall with his front bumper nosed squarely up to the bar, stepped out with minor bruises. The dust had no sooner settled than the air was filled with political gags. Quipped Bonn's Mayor Wilhelm Daniels, an Adenauer supporter: "I know that Carlo Schmid does not particularly like Bonn, but this is no reason for wrecking our beer halls!"

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