In answer to a Philadelphia bureaucrat's demand for deletion of a line in The Best Man slurring the city's drinking water, Playwright Gore Vidal said, "I'm a fervent foe of water pollution whether it is our own Hudson River or Philadelphia's tap water," left the script intact. Just as bold on his own Hudson, where he is currently running for Congress in a Republican-dominated, midstate New York district. Democrat Vidal recently boasted, "I say 80% of what I think--a hell of a lot more than any politician I know." Not that it was likely to make much difference. "If this were not a presidential year, I might have a chance," he admitted. "As it is, every four years, about 20,000 extra people crawl out of their Hudson Gothic woodwork up here to vote for William McKinley." From at least one supporter, Vidal prefers silent devotion--"Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt has endorsed me, but we don't dare have her appear; the Roosevelt name is still murder up here."

Saddened by the death of his second collaborator, Oscar Hammerstein II (the first: Larry Hart), Broadway Composer Richard Rodgers last week announced a "big experiment": writing his own lyrics for a remake of a Rodgers-Hammerstein 1945 film, State Fair. "I've been working since I was 16--42 years with other people's words; something must have rubbed off by this time."

At Cornell University, where he told a gathering of railroad union executives that the U.S. "public transportation policy is so out of harmony with the realities of 1960 as to be more closely reflective of the vanished realities of 1920," Labor Secretary James P. Mitchell took time out to chat with a New Deal predecessor. The ex-Secretary: Frances Perkins, now, at 78, a thrice-a-week lecturer at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations and still as spunky as the day in 1933 when, as the nation's first female Cabinet member, she admitted to a reporter that her sex might be a handicap in one respect --"climbing trees."

For several years America's winningest thoroughbred trainer, Hirsch Jacobs, has selected a few horses from his vast stable to run under the salmon pink and green colors of his pretty daughter Patrice, 23. Last winter the Marymount Junior College alumna was given her first chance to pick her own yearling, and after weeks of study, she chose Hail to Reason--which this summer emerged as the nation's top two-year-old. But last week in an early-morning workout at Aqueduct, the horse that Patrice felt had "developed the nicest personality I've seen in a colt" bobbled, broke two bones in his left front leg, and was retired to stud. Said a tearful Miss Jacobs: "In racing, you must take the bitter with the sweet. And this colt gave us so much pleasure." He had also--in his eight months of competition--given them $328,434.

Tokyo's new $616,000 Eastern Palace was bustling as the young Imperial couple prepared for an eight-city U.S. good-will tour, which began in Honolulu last week and includes--in addition to the official festivities in Washington--a Disneyland fling, a Yankees-Red Sox ball game and a visit with the Princess' Yale graduate-student brother. While Crown Prince Akihito, 26, was buying some new suits (a Japanese magazine had recently scolded, "Prince, your trousers are too wide"), slim Crown Princess Michiko, 25, was packing ten kimonos and a dozen occidental dresses, lovingly tape-recording some lullabies so seven-month-old Prince Hiro "won't forget me while I am away." But a pre-departure press conference revealed one bit of personal parental attention the baby will not get during their current 16-day absence: "Yes," confessed Akihito, "I do change his diapers and bathe him sometimes when no one else is around."

Surprising almost no one, the French Armed Forces Ministry reported that haut-strung Couturier Yves Saint-Laurent, 24, had been hospitalized for "acute nervous depression" almost from the minute of his long-delayed induction fortnight ago. The delicate Diorman was resting at a military infirmary near Paris with a pair of sentries barring the door against the press, thus taking away from, rather than adding to, the fighting strength of the French army.

"I've recorded 26 single releases, and all of them have sold over a million," calculated Discharged Doughboy Elvis Presley, while drinking his lunch (a bottle of cola, because "I get tired in the afternoon if I eat anything") one noon last week. "In fact, I have 33 gold records because some of them went over 2,000,000." His latest, It's Now or Never (better known to oldsters as O Sole Mio), is his hottest seller since Hound Dog, should easily pass the 2,000,000 mark. How does he explain the success? "I don't read music, but I know what I like. When a record date comes up, I just fool around with the number, and have the chorus put in some 'oohs' here and some 'ahs' there."

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