It was the first New York press conference for Hollywood Ingenue Katharine Houghton, 22, and she got things going by demurely introducing her aunt. So much for Katharine Houghton. Her aunt turned out to be Katharine Hepburn, 60. And for the rest of the interview, young Katharine sat awed as auntie discoursed on Novocain-free dentistry ("A little pain builds your character"), her campaign cap ("I was in the Confederate army"), and the acting simplicity of her late, longtime co-star Spencer Tracy ("a baked potato"). Not quite forgetting the purpose of the conference, Hepburn did offer a few professional words about her remarkably look-alike niece, who makes her movie debut in the last movie Hepburn and Tracy made together: a comedy called Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. "For her a smile is a smile is a smile," sighed old Kate. "For me it's a camera angle."

"This is the way to campaign," exulted Vice President Hubert Humphrey, 56. Even Wife Muriel agreed that it was "great." The Vice President had been turned on by two Go-Go girls whom he almost knocked over as he hurried into a $25-a-head cocktail party for Philadelphia's electioneering Mayor James Tate. Unflappable Campaigner Humphrey recovered his balance and shook hands with the two girls, who were clad only in black boots, tight red leotards and astonished expressions. "I was thunderstruck," said Joan Krauss, 23. "I'm not used to meeting Vice Presidents in my underwear."

Little did anyone suspect that Oil Magnate J. Paul Getty, 74, is really the George Plimpton of Billionaire's Row. But at an Anglo-American Sporting Club dinner in London in honor of Jack Dempsey, 72, Getty recalled that 44 years ago he and the then-champion had climbed into the ring together. "Jack is one of the real heroes in my life," the oilman gushed. "We went two rounds together in Saratoga in 1923, and he convinced me I would never make a boxer. He knew just how much I could take." Countered Gentleman Jack: "On the contrary, Paul, I didn't pull my punches at all." With that, the two old hams squared off once again for the photographers.

Author Ernest Hemingway used to pour himself into his letters--and never with less inhibition than when writing to a young Italian woman named Adriana Ivancich in the early 1950s. "Miss Mary always regarded how I felt about you as a cosa sagrada [sacred thing]," the novelist wrote. "It was something that struck me like lightning." Now the London auction house of Christie's has announced that it will sell 65 of Papa's letters to Adriana, a Milanese countess and the self-proclaimed heroine of Across the River and Into the Trees. Miss Mary, clinging to her notion that some things are indeed sagrada, declared that as executrix of her husband's estate she will try to keep the auctioned letters from being published, even though some excerpts have already found their way into the Times of London.

"Exploit me?" asked the Clipper. "Aren't we all exploited in a way when we take a job?" Maybe so, but the fans were still digging for their sympathy cards at the news that onetime New York Yankee Hero Joe DiMaggio, 52, has signed on as executive vice president of the Oakland (formerly Kansas City) Athletics, owned by Insurance Executive Charles O. Finley, 49. Charley O. has run through no fewer than nine executive errand boys in his seven years as owner, and Joe himself acknowledges that he will be "more or less of a consultant, working with player personnel and on trades." No one doubted that Di Maggio can be a great public relations help in getting the Athletics established in his native Bay Area, but why did the well-fixed Joe D. want such a patsy's job in the first place? "I got tired of playing golf," he said. "I've been idle long enough."

No matter that Poet-Classicist Robert Graves, in his long years of scholarly iconoclasm, has theorized that Jesus survived the Crucifixion and that the Odyssey was composed by Homer's daughter--this time he may have gone too far. Abetted by Persian Poet Omar Ali-Shah, Graves has plunged back into a 12th century Sufi manuscript and emerged with his version of "a faithful recasting" of The Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayaam. The celebrated 1889 translation by Edward FitzGerald, growled Graves, is unauthentic, uncraftsmanlike and misleading, transforming an essentially religious poem into "a drunkard's rambling profession of the hedonistic creed." Correct though he may be, Graves stands little chance with his new translation. What smitten adolescent would ever give up:

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness--Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow! for A gourd of red wine and a sheaf of poems--A bare subsistence, half

loaf, not more-Supplies us two alone in the free desert: What Sultan would we envy on his throne?

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