The Busy Life

While passengers on the Queen Elizabeth lined the rails before dawn to cheer them off, General Dwight D. Eisenhower and wife Mamie boarded a tender, headed for Cherbourg dockside. At a breakfast reception in the customs shed, the general drank a champagne toast with Cherbourg's Mayor Edmond Soufflet, recalled that his arrival this time had been considerably easier than his Normandy landing more than six years ago, added seriously: "With God's help, and with all of us working together, we can keep peace." The general then boarded a plane for Paris and his new duties as commander of Western Europe's defense forces. Temporarily settled in Versailles' Trianon Palace Hotel, Mamie Eisenhower's first job was to find a place for them to live. Like many another American in Paris, she found few likely prospects.

A familiar figure around Washington courtrooms these days: Earl Browder 59, former head of the U.S. Communist Party. Out on bail awaiting a contempt of Congress trial, at which he has announced he will be his own defense attorney, Browder is currently busy boning up on courtroom dialectic.

To be sure that the Duchess of Kent, sister-in-law of King George VI, would get a proper cup of tea at the matinee, the management of London's Scala Theater scurried to a theatrical costumer, laid out $28 to rent a solid gold tea service for the afternoon. Next day, Mayfair gossip that the duchess would announce her engagement to handsome Anthony Eden turned out to be far from solid. Eden's secretary told the Sunday Pictorial: "Not a shred of truth in the rumor."

After four months of a luxury safari,

Rita Hayworth called it quits in Nairobi, Kenya, East Africa, sent word to husband Aly Khan, out shooting big game in the veldt, that she was taking off for the Riviera to see her children and rest in more civilized comfort.

Flesh & Blood

In a Manhattan hospital, the Duchess of Windsor was in "satisfactory condition" after a "minor operative procedure" performed by Dr. Henry Wisdom Cave, president of the American College of Surgeons, and attended by famed Gynecologist Dr. Benjamin P. Watson, fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh.

In St. Louis on tour, laryngitis forced Henry (Mr. Roberts) Fonda to turn his lead role over to an understudy for the first time since the play opened over three years ago.

Doing some research on 12th Century England, Antiquarian Charles R. Beard turned up a footnote on King Richard I. The lion-hearted king had stomach ulcers. His favored treatment: lots of strong hot wine.

Fame & Fortune

In Manhattan, Enrico Caruso's widow Dorothy finally came right out and said that the only living tenor who comes close to wearing "Rico's" crown is the Metropolitan Opera's Swedish-born Jussi Bjoerling. Said Tenor Bjoerling: "The greatest moment of my life."

Invited to "entertain" at a Harvard freshman smoker, Fan Dancer Sally Rand decided to give her performance a new twist. She turned up in ermine wrap and strapless evening gown, smiled at the wolfish whistles as she took off her fur announced: "That's as far as I go tonight." After a song & dance, she launched into a ten-minute lecture on the evils of Communism. The disappointed freshmen lobbed about a quarter's worth of pennies at the stage, and one grumbled later, "The whole idea was to have a good time, not listen to politics. She didn't show good taste." Next day Sally indignantly denied that she had walked tearfully off stage at the penny treatment. Said she: "Why, I had a wonderful time, and I hope the boys did too."

The Norwegian committee in Oslo announced that the candidates for the 1951 Nobel Peace Prize included: United Nations Secretary General Trygve Lie-India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru; U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson; Former University of Chicago Chancellor Robert M. Hutchins; the Moral Re-Armament movement's Frank N. Buchman.

Left by the late Eddy Ducriin, who early in life discovered that piano-playing was more profitable than working in his father's drugstore: an estate valued at $500,000.

In a Nevada court, the estate of the late Novelist Lloyd C. (The Robe) Douglas was estimated at $100,000.

Mrs. Hetty Wilks, who learned the art of dollar-pinching from her fabulously rich mother Hetty ("The Witch of Wall Street") Green, left an estate estimated at more than $75 million. Except for $1,000,000 to be divided among friends and servants, the estate goes to 63 charities, churches and schools, including Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Vassar. Biggest bequest: $3,000,000 to Johns Hopkins.

Idle Hours

For $500 a session, Soprano Astrid Varnay offered to spend her free evenings baby-sitting and turn over the money to the Metropolitan Opera Fund. The idea, she said, "came to me in a flash." She even had a good word to say for her babysitting technique: "Treat them like grownups. I usually tell them little stories about my friends and things I have been doing."

Playboy Conrad ("Nicky") Hilton Jr., 24, divorced last month by Cinemactress Elizabeth Taylor, got some more headlines with a one-round bout in the early morning calm of a Hollywood bar. An Air Force lieutenant with a brunette date asked Hilton to tone down his language. Instead, the lieutenant got a sock on the nose and some advice: "Bums like you ought to be in Korea." The Air Force counterattacked and Hilton got a lump behind the ear.

In Tokyo, Arthur MacArthur, son of the general, became a teenager. Wearing paper hats and tooting party horns, 15 friends gathered to help celebrate his 13th birthday with guessing games (which the host diplomatically never won), a big, rose-decorated cake, a Roy Rogers movie. Arthur's favorite present (from his parents) : a new zither on which he promptly started plucking out the Third Man theme.

To get in trim for the forthcoming Hemisphere discussions, Dean Acheson flew to Bermuda with his wife for a two-week rest, his longest vacation since he became Secretary of State more than two years ago.

Generalissimo Francisco Franco had a suggestion: France should let its one-time ambassador to Spain, Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, now under a life sentence for treason, come to live in Spain and enjoy "the hospitality of our wonderful Mediterranean climate, where, until passions die down, he could spend the last years of his life, loved and respected." In Paris, a few World War I veterans, celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Battle of Verdun, remembered their old hero, set up a chant of "Set Petain free" before police could silence them.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.