The Formative Years

Washington Post Music Critic Paul Hume, whose opinion of daughter Margaret's singing last month prompted Harry Truman to take angry pen in hand, felt the sting of some critical grapeshot himself. After Hume narrated Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf for a National Symphony children's concert in Constitution Hall, the Post printed a frank opinion by six-year-old Critic Frank Manola: "He doesn't sound like Basil Rathbone on my Peter and the Wolf records. He sounds more like Phil Harris on the radio."

Now 18, getting a divorce, and called by Hollywood columnists "The Sad Siren," Cinemactress Elizabeth Taylor found that she had lost her appetite, was tense before mealtime, and suffered after-eating aches & pains. Said her doctor: a clear case of incipient ulcers.

World War I Ace Eddie Rickenbacker appeared at a Manhattan recruiting office, his face wrinkled with pleasure, to help swear in, as an Air Force cadet, his younger son, William F. Rickenbacker, 22.

Michelle Farmer, 18, dark-haired daughter of Gloria Swanson, announced that she was serious about acting, and planned to stay indefinitely in London to study the British theater: "I have a fear of anyone rising too quickly, and I don't care if it takes me 20 years to get to the top."

Having been in the limelight herself for several years, Sharman Douglas, 22, daughter of the former U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, was off to pound a $125-a-week Hollywood typewriter and turn the beam on someone else. The job: helping RKO publicize Cinemactress Jean Simmons.

Words & Music

Polish-born Pola Negri, 51, heavy-lidded vamp of the silent screen, who first came to the U.S. in 1922, appeared last week in a Los Angeles federal court to take her final oath as a U.S. citizen. She was now busy, she said, writing her autobiography to be called, As Much As I Dare.

At New York City's Idlewild Airport, an alert photographer spotted a dangerous stowaway: a yellow-snouted beetle, 5/8-in. long, which was crawling along the coat collar of incoming Conductor Serge Koussevitzky. Department of Agriculture inspectors hastily popped the bug into a vial of alcohol, sent it to Washington for identification. Last week the bug experts reported: it was "a formidable pest," a member of the Larinus family, which lives mainly in France and Italy, is sure death to thistles and artichokes.

For safety's sake, Captain Charles R. Pilcher of the liner Rangitoto offered to lower a lifeboat when he learned that a passenger, the Most Rev. Dr. Geoffrey F. Fisher, 63, Archbishop of Canterbury, wanted to go ashore in Panama and planned to leave the ship via the jouncing boarding ladder. The sure-footed prelate declined the lifeboat, and when he learned that the captain was partially worried about the ship's safety record, dashed off a limerick for the occasion:

Captain Pilcher sat glum and alone And muttered with heart-rending moan: "The archbishop will float If he falls out the boat, While my fortunes will sink like a stone."

After weeks of dickering in Manhattan, the National Broadcasting Co. reached a tentative agreement for a dozen radio and television shows with Margaret Truman as either a singer or comedienne for guest appearances. Reported salary: between $2,000 and $3,000 a show.

In San Francisco, New York Philharmonic Conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos explained why he did not bother to use a score when conducting:"Does a lion tamer enter a cage with a book on 'How to Tame a Lion'?"

After a sliver of glass hit her right eye during the goblet-smashing scene in Der Rosenkavalier at the Metropolitan Opera House, Mezzo-Soprano Rise Stevens carried on to the end of the act. During intermission she had the splinter removed. Then, relying on a boric-acid eye bath, she turned down an unglamorous bandage, sang through the last act.

Change of Scene

After being divorced by seven wives, Asbestos Heir Tommy Manville, 56, announced that this time he was the one who would go West and file for divorce. Said No. 8, British-born Georgina Campbell, 32: "I think he'll feel better about it if he brings the suit. It's better for him psychologically. He always felt that women were running away from him."

Arthur Godfrey fans would not be seeing their freckle-faced favorite on TV screens for a while. He was off for a short tour as a reserve officer in the Navy, would take a refresher course at Pensacola, Fla. before doing a fortnight's tour of duty at General Eisenhower's headquarters in Europe. After that, said Godfrey, he would doff his commander's uniform and come back to his audience with some thoughts on world conditions.

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