Monday, Jan. 13, 1975

Switzerland's Bernese Oberland was chock-a-block with celebrities last week. Among those on skiing holidays were the Ago Khan, Audrey Hepburn, Roman Polanski and Jack Nicholson. On the slopes of Crans-Sur-Sierre, Jackie Onassis, in a snappy jacket and warmup pants, cut such a dashing figure that at one point she careered downhill and landed in a split. Son John, 14, was more conservative, preferring to give a Bronx cheer to a photographer. In Gstaad, Novice Nicholson was struggling with the subtleties of wedeling. "He loves zooming downhill," sighed Temporary Instructor Polanski. "His style is like a guy who scratches his left ear with his right hand."

One morning while I was out shopping

Though you 'II find it hard to believe

A little blue man came out of the crowd

And timidly tugged at my sleeve

I wuv you, Iwuv you, said the little blue man

I wuv you, I wuv you to bits

I wuv you

The little blue man is no fool. Gospel-style Singer June Hunt, 29, whose first single this is, is the stepdaughter and one of the heirs of the late billionaire H.L. Hunt. Last year she signed a five-year contract with the financially troubled Stax Records of Memphis and made her recording debut just before Christmas with rusty-oldie Little Blue Man. An LP will be released this spring. In the past, June has promoted some of her stepfather's right-wing causes, such as the Youth Freedom Speakers, even as she built her career, singing and playing the guitar in churches. Now she intends to concentrate on music, describing her style as "message-oriented Pop." She sounds just like Doris Day, say admirers, and has earned a rave from the magazine Record World, whose reviewer pronounced her record "a possible giant."

Tom-toms echoed over the Santa Monica mountains. Twenty miles northwest of Beverly Hills, Marlon Brando was busy giving back to the Indians some 40 acres of rolling hill country in Agoura. Senator John V. Tunney, along with more than a dozen Indians, watched as Marlon turned the deed over to Semu Huaurte, medicine man of the 23-tribe Redwind Association. At week's end, though, it appeared that the gift was a bit less generous than it had seemed initially. The land is heavily mortgaged, but Brando's attorney insists that arrangements (so far unspecified) have been made to pay off the debt. Marlon had earlier announced that he was giving back all his property, including his $150,000 house off Mulholland Drive, an apartment complex in Anaheim worth more than $250,000, and his share of the 40-acre Illinois farm on which his elder sister, Mrs. Frances Loving, lives. Mrs. Loving reacted at first with almost Palestinian bitterness: "It will happen over my dead body." Later, she said she had been joking. "I'm completely approving," she said.

"Oh, you'll take the high road and I'll take the low road, and I'll be in Scotland afore ye." So goes the folk song Loch Lomond. Trudging along the low road last week was Uganda's President Idi ("Big Daddy") Amin. Clearly imbued with the spirit of hogmanay, the President celebrated the birth of his 19th child--14 in wedlock, five out--by firing off letters to U.N. Secretary-General Waldheim, Soviet Leader Brezhnev and Chinese Chairman Mao Tse-tung, asking them to support Scotland's secession from Great Britain. "The leaders of the Scottish Provisional Government have asked me to inform your excellencies," declared Big Daddy, "that England is now bankrupt. Now they are working out plans to exploit Scotland further by grabbing the money to be obtained from North Sea oil."

You have to be born in Brooklyn to like it. And if you like it, you do not want to leave it. So the twelve children, aged eight on up, of Hugh Carey went to Albany with mixed feelings last week for their father's inauguration on New Year's Eve as New York's 51st Governor. To take his family northward, Father Hugh hired a bus, and when the first roadside ALBANY sign was spotted, a cry at the back was heard: "Turn this bus around!" Arriving at the gingerbread mansion that will be their home for at least four years, the Carey kids were even more disconsolate. "Albany is an awful place, isn't it?" said one, and added, "They should change the capital to New York City. Albany has no life. Why, I don't think they even have an ice-cream parlor." The Governor was more concerned with state affairs, so Son Michael, 21, was delegated to be tactful: "There's been a couple of moaners and groaners, but everyone is going along."

There was this roopy old blighter P.O. Wodehouse, who should by rights be handing in his dinner pail. Then into the Drones' Club shimmers a cove in soup-and-fish, yipping, "You're going to be a knight, old bean." Last week "Plum" Wodehouse, 93, was named a knight in the Queen's New Year Honors List, along with that dapper crumpet of a comic Charlie Chaplin. A resident of Remsenburg, L.I., and an American citizen since 1956, Plum was stirred to the depths of his being. Forgotten were the World War II slurs that Wodehouse, captured by the Nazis in France in 1940, had collaborated with them. Remembered instead was the image of his creation, languorous Bertie Wooster, who led the Germans so splendidly astray that in 1942 they dropped an agent in Norfolk wearing spats. Wodehouse regretfully declined the invitation to attend the forthcoming investiture because of his age, although Chaplin, a sprightly 85, is already dusting off his topper. "Sir Pelham," however, rolled as easily off the Wodehouse tongue as rannygazoo, the preferred Wooster word for kafuffle. He added, "It's my wife who likes it most. She loves the idea of being called Lady Wodehouse."

"A Beatle is here!" A rumor swept the crowd of tourists lined up for the "Pirates of the Caribbean" at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla. Getting into the spirit of things, John Lennon, 34, cried, "Oh, is it George Harrison? Where is he? Where is he?" Then he dropped back into the anonymity he had been enjoying during his Christmas stay in Palm Beach along with his secretary, May Pang, 24, and his son by his first marriage, Julian, 11, who lives in London. "I'd like to go to England to see my son, you know," said Lennon, referring to the efforts of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to deport him from the U.S., which curtail his travel plans. Back in New York, John plans to work hard as director of promotion for the Bioellectrol Foundation, which specializes in orthopedic research. He hopes to also return to Palm Beach. Said John: "I'd like to own a piece of it."

The briefest New Year's resolution: White House Press Secretary Ron Nessen announced to the press on New Year's morning that he had given up smoking. Ordinarily a two-to-three-pack-a-day man, he had not drawn on a filter for 10 1/2 hours. Clearly pleased with himself, Nessen then walked down the hall to his office, automatically and apparently unconsciously lighting up as he did so.

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