On a sunny afternoon in Manhattan's Central Park, Denmark's visiting King Frederik IX and Queen Ingrid appeared with Danish-born Pianist-Funnyman Victor Borge beside a statue of Denmark's greatest teller of fairy tales, Hans Christian Andersen. Borge, wearing half-spectacles "for very short stories.'' read two Andersen tales to some 100 bemused tots. The children could not quite feign indifference to a real King and Queen, and at one point a local lad asked chainsmoking Frederik pointblank: "King, where is your crown? I thought all Kings wore crowns." Affable Frederik explained that a crown is a special-occasion headpiece: "I only wear it when I'm in Denmark.'' The answer did not quite satisfy the boy, who later told newsmen that he was sure this was a special occasion--because his mother had made him wash his ears for it.
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The three disabilities that pelvis-twirling Elvis Presley might most fear are a sore throat, a dislocated hip, or an injury to his guitar-strumming paw. During his recent Army draftee stint he was briefly silenced by tonsillitis. Last week, during a touch-football game in home-town Memphis, Elvis dived at the ball carrier, broke the little finger of his string-zinging hand. His hips, however, are still swinging.
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Since their marriage last year, ex-R.A.F. Group Captain Peter Townsend, 45, unlucky in love with Princess Margaret, and his second wife, Belgian ex-Photographer Marie-Luce, 21, have lived quietly in a Paris suburb, collaborated on the house work, relaxed with morning constitutionals. Arriving in Manhattan last week, they put up in a modest hotel. Townsend, who once snidely ticked off the U.S. as a materialistic nation of salesmen, had possibly come to the U.S. to sell something but craftily kept the exact nature of his fortnight's ''business trip" a stiff-upper-lipped mystery.
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Reminiscent of his late great-profiled father, Actor John Barrymore Jr., 28, whose profile is partially obscured by dense shrubbery, has spent most of this month in the headlines and eight days of it in a Roman jail. His troubles revolve around a pretty girl, Italian Starlet Gabriella ("Gaby") Palazzoli, 23. A street brawl erupted when three Roman punks taunted two of Gaby's brothers about young Barrymore's beard--a male appurtenance made to order for some special Italian insults. After the brawlers were hauled off to Rome's Queen of Heaven clink, Barrymore, Gaby and Gaby's papa went there to spring the Palazzoli boys, so ardently set about liberating the captives that they soon were jugged themselves. Let off with an eight-month suspended sentence (Gaby and Signor Palazzoli were exonerated). Suitor Barrymore whisked Gaby off to be fitted for a wedding gown, announced that they will wed this week.
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After Movie Tough Guy Humphrey Bogart died of throat cancer two years ago, Hollywood began speculating about whom his widow. Actress Lauren (''Betty") Bacall, would marry. The contenders were wildly averred to range from Frank Sinatra (who seems in no marrying mood these days) to Francis X. Bushman (who at 77 is happily retired with his fourth wife). Last week in Manhattan, where Lauren appeared last winter in a Broadway flop titled Goodbye, Charlie, matters came to a triple head. A Broadway actor who bears a striking resemblance to a younger Bogart, Jason (Toys in the Attic) Robards Jr., was sued for divorce or separation by his wife, who named Lauren, 36, as the reason. Taking the charge in manful stride, Robards, 38, promptly broke his silence: "I love Betty. As soon as this is over, we'll get married."
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Out of the recent past and into a French Press Agency party in a Moscow eatery walked a tall Englishman in a neat Savile Row suit, red waistcoat and old Etonian tie. The uninvited guest: Guy Burgess, 49, onetime British Foreign Officer who defected to the Soviet Union in 1951 with his drinking and otherwise intimate companion, Donald Maclean. Burgess, proudly proclaiming that he is still a British subject, allowed that he'd "like to go back to Britain for a holiday--just so long as I could be certain of getting back to the Soviet Union." But Burgess "won't go back so long as the cold war goes on." As he left with a deep pink glow, Burgess burbled: "Oh God, I suppose this will make headlines again."
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Denying that he had said, back in Texas, that anyone who voted for Nixon should go to hell, Harry Truman gave another version: "I said that the country would be 'in a hell of a shape if the Republicans win." Listening amusedly to the row that Harry's infernal language has inspired. Syndicated Columnist Eleanor Roosevelt observed: ''Somehow I think the morals of our children will survive President Truman's speech." It all reminded Mrs. R. of "a little story we used to laugh about in our family for many years." Recalled she: "My mother-in-law [Sarah Delano Roosevelt], like Vice President Nixon, felt that no gentleman ever used bad language. When by chance my husband said 'damn' in front of the children, she would draw herself up and say: 'Franklin never used to use bad language. He has learned it from his little boy Johnny, whom you, Eleanor, allow to spend so many hours in the stable!'"
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