A strong candidate for inclusion in Queen Elizabeth's next Honors List. Rex Harrison, 53, had grown so touchy about his associations that he backed out of a play in which his part obliged him to denounce democracy as "disgusting." Fearful that the iconoclasm of his lines might alienate Buckingham Palace ("I don't want to be in anything subversive") and discouraged by lukewarm critical reception, Harrison announced that he would abandon Nigel Dennis' August for the People by mid-month. Among the lesser troupers who will be made jobless by Harrison's decision was the gifted actress who portrayed his mistress Rachel Roberts, 33, daughter of a Welsh Baptist minister and favored traveling companion of aspiring knight bachelor Harrison.
When London reporters insisted on raking over his part in planning the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan's visiting Air Defense Force chief, General Minoru Genda, 57, incautiously blurted: "I have no regrets." As his British Air Ministry hosts froze, blunt General Genda ("You must remember that in these things I speak as a soldier") hastily offered a retraction. "Yes, I do have regrets," he confessed. "We should not have attacked just once--we should have attacked again and again."
The two-year romance between Karim Ago Khan, 24, spiritual leader of 20 million Ismaili Moslems, and Anouchka von Meks, 19, pert French-bred daughter of a German clothier, went briefly on the rocks. Bound for Sardinia in Karim's 15 ton cabin cruiser Taara, the pair suddenly found themselves lodged high and wet on a well-marked reef near Corsica's Gulf of Ajaccio. After the Taara was towed ashore, the Harvard-educated prince was informed by a local yachtsman that a French naval yard near by had facilities to repair the boat's mashed propellers, "but they won't help you because it's a military base." Karim's response--"I am Prince Karim, the Aga Khan"--changed the tune, and next day, with the Taara seaworthy once more, Karim and Anouchka decided wouldn't it be lubberly to try again, and throttled off into the Mediterranean sun.
Faithful to the intentions of Architect Eero Saarinen, who died fortnight ago at 51, his partners will move the offices of Eero Saarinen & Associates from its longtime headquarters in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., to Hamden, Conn., sometime next month. Still on his drawing boards in Bloomfield were the daring, Finnish-born form giver's final designs, among them plans for a 37-story Manhattan headquarters for the Columbia Broadcasting System. "Eero was especially excited about this design," recalled Saarinen Partner John Dinkeloo. "He felt he was going back to the tradition of Louis Sullivan and making a step forward from that dramatic and optimistic moment in the design of tall buildings."
A veteran of four previous husbands in 22 years, Love Goddess Rita Hayworth, 42, tearlessly shed the latest incumbent, Writer-Producer James Hill, because he was disparaging ("He said I was not a nice woman in too loud a voice") and aloof ("He would come home and go straight to his room").
Impatiently plotting to get sprung from the Hoosick Falls (N.Y.) Health Center, where she has been temporarily inactivated for the past two months, Pastoral Painter Grandma Moses breezed past her latest birthday with one modest request, "I want my 101st to be the same as my first--very quiet "
With customary sensitivity to the major trends in U.S. society, TV Impresario David Susskind came up with a colossal program idea: Why not do one of his Open End discussion shows on Hollywood's much-publicized Clan and invite Frank ("The Leader") Sinatra to participate? Back from Frankie came a telegram stating his price: $250,000 an hour. Piqued, David fired off an answering wire: "Presume stipulated fee is for your traditional program of intramural ring-a-ding-dinging with additional fillip of musical lyrics mounted on TelePrompTer. Please advise price for spontaneous discussion." But Sinatra emerged the victor by a cable's length: "The $250,000 fee is for my usual talent of song and dance. However, now that I understand the picture a little more clearly, I must change it to $750,000 for all parasitical programs."
Hacking along Los Angeles' Bel Air Country Club course with a foursome that included Actor Randolph Scott, Lawyer Richard Nixon, 48, watched bug-eyed as his five-iron shot on the 155-yard third hole plopped home for a hole in one. "This," exulted the former Vice President, "is the greatest thrill of my life--even better than being elected."*
Her dudgeon hitting high C, Soprano Renata Tebaldi scoffed at the suggestion that she was defecting from the Metropolitan Opera this season because of other commitments made during the Met's recent lengthy labor negotiations. Actual reason for her desertion, charged the prima donna, was that the Met management had shamelessly violated a promise "of many years" by scratching its scheduled revival of a Tebaldi favorite, Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur.
Twice-married James M. Landis, 61, onetime dean of Harvard Law School and for the last ten months special assistant to President Kennedy in charge of reforming the regulatory agencies, was named co-respondent in a divorce case. Filed by Washington Public Relations Man Joseph A. Todd, the suit charged that Landis had committed adultery during June and July 1961 with Todd's wife Pauline, mother of four and an Executive Branch secretary. Announced within hours of the divorce suit was Landis' resignation from his White House job--a seeming concatenation of events that presidential press aides said was purely coincidental.
Surveying the spoils showered on him and his wife at the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration at Shelbyville. Guest of Honor Lyndon B. Johnson saw method in the largesse. ''It's very interesting." said the Vice President, "that when you think of Lady Bird, you give her a very fine walking horse, but when you think of me, you give me a forty-pound. Tennessee-cured ham."
One of Washington's most fashionable genre artists, chic Lady Caccia, wife of departing British Ambassador Sir Harold Caccia, unveiled a favorite essay in oils. Setting of the painting: the swimming pool at the rented Virginia summer estate of New York's Senator Jacob Javits. Lady Caccia's model: the spouse of Kentucky's Senator John Sherman Cooper, sun-shy Lorraine Cooper, who totes a pastel parasol even when campaigning with her husband in the backwoods.
In pressure-cooked, petrolific Kuwait, where wives are wheeled and dealed like Cadillacs, Sheik Abdullah Al-Jabir As-Sabah, Minister of Justice and Education, finally met a woman who was his match. Six months ago. the 65-year-old sheik got his 27th divorce, this one from pretty ex-Secretary Heidi Dichter, 19. Last week, after yielding to ardent pleas from the changeable sheik, Heidi was back in the marital fold--but on terms. To lure Heidi home again, the sheik promised to pay her family back in Germany a stipend of $150 a month. And if he ever decides to shuck her again, the sheik is committed to pay Heidi's lawyer $7,500 and Heidi herself $2,500,000.
* To the Vice Presidency, that is.
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