"I like to open my costume so that I can turn quickly," pouted Egypt's best-known Little Egypt, Nahed Sabry. For three years, poor Nahed and the rest of the country's belly dancers had been all wrapped up by the government's distinctly un-Faroukian rules of decency, which flatly decreed costumes that "covered the chest, stomach and back and had no slits or openings on the sides or elsewhere." But now Mustafa Darweesh, the Ministry of Culture's chief censor, thinks he can stomach a more liberal code. "There is a new outlook everywhere in the field of art," he explained soberly. The outlook in Egypt will certainly improve with Darweesh's ruling that the girls may now peel off five or six of their seven veils. Purred Nahed: "This is a nice man."
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Only five weeks after it was released, the platter had sold 500,000 copies and grossed $2,125,000; it was every bit as hot as the Beatles' first album. His career was off to such a boffo start that the new recording star, Illinois' Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, 70, decided that a little TV exposure wouldn't hurt. He signed on to intone portions of his patriotic recital, Gallant Men, on ABC's Hollywood Palace, a taped show scheduled for Jan. 14. Unlike most vocalists, Ev is giving all the profits ($75,000 so far) to charity.
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When his home town of Columbia, S.C., held an elaborate "day" in his honor just five years ago, former Secretary of State James Byrnes chuckled: "Few people have an opportunity to hear themselves funeralized. Momentarily I expect someone to say, 'Don't he look natural?' " Now 87, Jimmy Byrnes and Maude, his wife of 60 years, were still looking mighty spry as they posed in his office under the portraits of some of Jimmy's old acquaintances--Molotov, Roosevelt, Stalin and Eisenhower. Long retired from statecraft, Jim keeps active by overseeing the James F. Byrnes Foundation, which he organized in 1947 to provide college scholarships for needy students. The youngsters, in turn, have given the childless Byrneses a bronze plaque inscribed: "To Mom and Pop Byrnes from your foundation children."
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Filed for probate in Los Angeles, the will of Walt Disney settled 45% of his vast estate on a Disney Family Trust for his widow Lillian, their two daughters and seven grandchildren; another 45% went to the philanthropic Disney Foundation, chiefly for the benefit of the California Institute of the Arts, and the remaining 10% established a trust fund for his sister and three nieces. The great fantasist's will mentions no dollar figures, but with all his monumental real-estate holdings and film enterprises, the total is estimated at more than $50 million.
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Her ten-week visit to the U.S. left French Author Franc,ois Sagan, 31, with a certain smile. "In America, they trust you," she wrote in the weekly Candide. "They will lend you their cars, their apartments, anything. They are so open that it's troubling. The taxi driver tells you his life story, salesgirls call you 'honey.'" Helas, she also found much tristesse: "Americans are afraid, afraid of everything, especially of losing their position, of being sick, of not being able to pay their installments on time. And of their redoubtable women they are afraid above all else." Still, the redoubtable Franc,ois found men in the U.S. "as charming and virile as many French--but a little tired, perhaps." Bonne nuit.
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Her marriage had endured nearly three years, which was approaching the average time that Woolworth Heiress Barbara Mutton, 54, had spent with her six previous husbands. So naturally, when Babs left Tangiers a few weeks ago without No. 7, Laotian Prince Raymond Doan Vinh, 50, gossips assumed that the five-and-dime princess was making a change again. "Untrue," the prince said blandly during a stopover in Manhattan on the way to rejoin his wife at her $3,000,000 walled estate near Cuernavaca, Mexico. "All that gossip started in Tangiers, a small town where they have nothing else to do. Actually, I just went to Switzerland to see my two children." As for the talk that Babs had left him $4,000,000 as a parting gift, the prince explained: "She gave me more than $4,000,000." Oh, really? "She gave me love," he sighed.
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The thud that Restaurateur Toots Shor, 61, made when he tumbled off the wagon echoed all over the gossip columns. "Booze is beautiful," Toots bellowed to Leonard Lyons. "Through booze I met two Chief Justices, 50 world champs, six Presidents and DiMaggio and Babe Ruth." Gregarious Toots hadn't had a belt for an astonishing nine months, ever since he took a dive on a Washington hotel floor last March and broke his hip. "I vowed not to take a drink until I could stand on my own two feet," Toots graveled in his Manhattan diner. But now that he can stand, he's making up for all the lost weekends he lost. "I missed about 30 cases in those nine months," said Toots, happily pouring down Pantagruelian shots of brandy. "I wouldn't be able to estimate how many bottles I've had in the last four days."
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