The New World

For General Douglas MacArthur & family it was a week of catching up on peacetime fun. In his new civilian uniform (double-breasted, grey flannel suit, bow tie and grey felt hat), he arrived at Yankee Stadium to see the Yankee-Browns game, was asked by the announcer to say a few words. He obliged with some old memories of Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson and Lou Gehrig, ended by throwing his favorite punch line with a slight twist: "Unlike old soldiers who never die, unfortunately these men did, but American sportsmanship will never let their memory fade away." Next, in black tie and double-breasted dinner jacket, he turned up at the theater to see Mary Martin in South Pacific, the general's first Broadway show in 20 years. Later, he enjoyed a dressing-room chat with the star. Asked what song he preferred, Mrs. MacArthur answered: "The one he hums most often is Some Enchanted Evening." Next day, it was back to the diamond again, this time at Ebbets Field to see the Brooklyn Dodgers play the Boston Braves and to make another short speech: "I'm glad to be in Brooklyn ... I have seen the Giants and the Yankees [names which brought on some good-natured Brooklyn boos] . . . and somebody said, 'If you want to see a real game of baseball, go over to Ebbets Field.' So here I am." Despite the five-star rooting, however, the Dodgers lost, 12-10.

A Manhattan public relations firm proudly announced that it had hired some new help: exiled King Peter of Yugoslavia, 27, and his wife Queen Alexandra, 30, who will be "available for consultant services and public appearances for a limited number of prestige clients." One of the King's first tasks: to promote a snappy foreign sports car. The Queen will try her hand at designing some dresses.

South Africa's Prime Minister Daniel Malan celebrated his 77th birthday in Cape Town's House of Assembly. His wife gave him a homebaked, old-fashioned Boer pie, called a "milk tart"; the Nationalist party bigwigs came through with a desk and a black leather briefcase. In return, Africa-Firster Malan pledged once again to cut the Dominion loose from the British Commonwealth. Said he: "We shall become a republic. We must become a republic."

Cattlemen around San Antonio were getting ready to welcome a new part-time cowpuncher: Old Airman Eddie Riclcen-backer, who had paid $290,000 for the 2,700-acre Bear Creek Ranch.

Captain James Jabara, who downed six enemy planes in Korea to become history's first jet ace, got orders to return to the States for a well earned rest and a new assignment.

While visiting in Toronto, Sir Shane Leslie, cousin of Winston Churchill, dropped a genealogical footnote: "Six generations ago one of our ancestors, a Captain Wilcox, while riding home from the American Revolutionary War, met and later married a beautiful Indian half-caste. I believe that should make Mr. Churchill and me about one-twentieth Iroquois."

Speaking in London, Dr. Geofrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, and father of six sons, said: "The family of ten or twelve children is the only real kind of family." But in these days, said the archbishop, it is financially "beyond all possibility" for clergymen to enjoy such a privilege.

"My word, what we are missing!"

The Restless Foot

Dressed in a suit he had won in a radio quiz show last year, Jeff Davis, 68, King of U.S. Hoboes, Emperor of Hoboes of the World, left Seattle for Massillon, Ohio, to be an honorary pallbearer at the funeral of his good friend, the late "General" Jacob S. Coxey (TIME, May 28). Said Davis, a little sadly: "The road's not what it's cracked up to be. I've been around the world six times, and if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't."

The great migration was under way again. Metropolitan Opera Manager Rudolph Bing was off for three months of talent shopping in Europe; Mrs. Wendell Willkie for some Mediterranean sun; U.S. Treasurer Mrs. Georgia Neese Clark for a month's rest and to join the Democratic National Committee's vice chairman Mrs. India Edwards, already abroad.

Ezio (South Pacific) Pinza packed up his family, headed for Italy and his first trip abroad in twelve years.

Plumage experts aboard the Queen Elizabeth noted at sailing time one of those distressing coincidences. Mrs. Henry Ford II, on the way to Europe with Motormaker Ford and their two daughters, was wearing an elegant item from Manhattan's Mainbocher: an imported grey flannel, double-breasted suit with a six-gored skirt. The Duchess of Windsor was sporting the same model. On her way to Paris with the Duke to buy a "small house in the suburbs," the Duchess also shocked Manhattan milliners by wearing only a little mask veil, no hat.

Margaret Truman, sailing on her first trip abroad, where she will meet the British royal family, enjoy a Mesta party in Luxembourg and see the Pope in Rome, helped ease the modistes' moan. She wore a skull-tight hat, which she described as "a pistachio green coal scuttle." However, she also raised a problem. Hearstling Igor (The Smart Set) Cassini, who worries his typewriter over such things, pondered the big question on his beat: Should the President's daughter curtsy to British royalty? It might be a diplomatic triumph, Igor decided. "After all, what is a bending of the knee if it can help relations between two countries?"

The Common Touch

Back in London for some radio shows, after months of trouping around the continent, Orson Welles explained himself to British newsmen: "I'm a vagrant, a strolling player. I'm living from hotel to hotel, and I don't have a home of my own any more. I don't even have any money of my own, and you can say that again."

Speaking at an American Federation of Labor gathering in Chicago, Comedian George Jessel, 53, assured his audience that he had taken his last curtain call. "I have no desire to return to the stage, and yet I'm not envious of my younger contemporaries, for example, Milton Berle and Danny Kaye. I wish them everything you gentlemen wish Mr. Taft and Mr. Hartley."

Al Rothe, presidential barber from Fort McNair in Washington, proudly displayed his latest trophy. On the morning of Douglas MacArthur's speech to the nation he had cut the general's hair, carefully saved a good specimen, which he mounted in his souvenir box in a place of honor: right next to a lock of Harry Truman's.

The public scowls over her recent divorce and rumored romances, said Cinemactress Elizabeth Taylor, were making that incipient ulcer kick up again. All her troubles started, sighed the 19-year-old ex-wife of Hotel Heir Nicky Hilton, because "I have a woman's body and a child's emotions." People had tried to link her name with men, she added, "ever since I got so I could wear a plunging neckline, and that was when I was 14."

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