Back to the Pacific jetted General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, 81, to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Philippine independence. Among the stops on his itinerary: Corregidor, which he was forced to flee in 1942; Fort William McKinley cemetery, which honors the thousands of his troops who did not get away; Leyte beach, where he fulfilled his "I shall return" vow 2 1/2 years later.

While slipping into her summer-stock Silk Stockings at San Diego, leggy (39 in. from hipbone to toe) Juliet Prowse, 24, obliquely discussed her durable relationship with Frank Sinatra. Although allowing that he might consider her "dingaling" and perhaps had "flipped," the sinuous dancer was hardly ready to spill the banns. In the argot of the Rat Pack, explained she, "flip" means "to like someone an awful lot but not necessarily to fall in love. It's more like an urge."

Newly hung in Washington's National Gallery of Art were a Turner, a Gainsborough and a Reynolds, left to the museum by a onetime Boston auto dealer who died in 1958: Alvan Tufts Fuller, better known as the Massachusetts governor who refused to stay the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti. Also included in the Fuller estate: $80,646.94 in paychecks that he collected during his 13 years in public office and decided never to cash.

With fake Utrillos appearing on the market almost daily, the French impressionist's splenetic widow, Lucie Valore Utrillo, 63, happily incinerated 30 recently uncovered forgeries in the garden of her Montmartre home. While Lucie grandly called the ten-minute conflagration the salvation of her henpecked husband's reputation, a few witnesses cattily concluded that she was just trying to protect the market value of her collection (a recent Utrillo auction price: $52,000), insisted that the longtime alcoholic painter--in order to earn the purchase price of more liquor than his wife allowed him--had moonlighted a great many works she never saw, including some that wound up in last week's ashes.

In brassbound rites at the White House, the Air Force's outgoing Chief of Staff, General Thomas D. White, 59, was greeted by some incoming hardware: a massive trophy established in his name to honor aerospace achievement. Besides delivering a retirement tribute to 41-year Veteran White (his successor: General Curtis E. LeMay), President Kennedy inspected the bronze statue of a mesomorphic figure hurling a rocket with one hand and snagging a nose cone with the other, quipped sadly: "He looks like he has a strong back."

Boston's Richard Cardinal Gushing, 65, took another vow. In a note headed "Words Without End, Amen" in the archdiocese's weekly Pilot, the outspoken archbishop--whose smoke-evoking invocation at the January presidential inaugural seemed almost as long as the address of Parishioner John F. Kennedy--confessed: "Someone has told me that I am fine for about 15 minutes, but when I get to the half-hour mark, one is more interested in physical survival than in spiritual sustenance. From then on, one just lives on hope." The cardinal's pledged penance: in the future, when delivering a sermon or making a speech, he will "bring along someone with a bell or a buzzer. I will get the gong when I hit the 15-minute mark."

Once acclaimed as "the most wise man in the nation," Basil ("The Owl") Banghart, 61, had been confined with his wisdom to Illinois penitentiaries -- except during a couple of brief but inspired bust-outs -- for 27 years. Locked up with him was Roger ("The Terrible") Touhy, his accomplice in the kidnaping of Stockbroker John ("Jake the Barber") Factor. But in 1959, Touhy was paroled, and last week the sickly, nearly blind Owl followed him out. A Detroit Purple Gang alumnus when tapped as Touhy triggerman, Banghart did not go home again, last week moved instead to the Episcopal-run St. Leonard's House (for parolees) in Chicago -- lest he end up like Touhy, gunned down in his 23rd day of freedom.

After peppery, longtime little-magazine (National and English Review) Editor Lord Altrincham chose another publication (the Guardian) to print his angry blast at Britain's anti-nuclear-test, "Better Red than Dead" boys, the Observer's usually sententious Kenneth Tynan turned his drama column into a soapbox. Lathered he: "Suppose one were confronted with an outright choice between nuclear annihilation and the Communist hegemony. The hero nowadays would be the man who elected to live under the new regime hoping to change it; and the coward would be the man who preferred, like Lord Altrincham, to lie down and die."

Out of the front seat of the ambulance popped a worried Joe DiMaggio to escort a sheet-shrouded stretcher case, Film Frail Marilyn Monroe, 35, as she was carried into Manhattan's Polyclinic Hospital for her fourth inpatient performance in five months. This time, it was not a nervous disorder. And 36 hours (2 1/2 of them under the knife) later, her seven-man medical task force had removed her gall bladder to prove it. Marilyn's medicine men reported that she would be dismissed within two weeks, could expect a full recovery. Echoed second ex-Husband DiMaggio: "She's going to be all right."

"I'm making far more money than I would have as President." confided Lawyer-Journalist Richard M. Nixon to the Manhattan press--and the next day it was announced that he intended to publish a book entitled Six Crises, and raise his income even higher. Chapters: the 1948 House Un-American Activities Commit tee investigation of Alger Hiss, Nixon's 1952 TV defense against slush-fund charges, contemplation of the presidential succession following Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1955 heart attack, the riot-tossed South American trip of 1958, the 1959 Moscow "kitchen debate" with Nikita Khrushchev, and the less successful 1960 confrontation with John F. Kennedy.

Minority rule continued in 95%-Catholic Dublin as Protestant Lord Mayor Maurice Dockrell was unseated by a onetime predecessor. Robert Briscoe, who in 1956 had become the first Jew ever to wear the gold chain of office. Also a favorite in New York City--where he joined a small Irish republican band in an attempted seizure of the Irish consulate in 1922 and returned in 1939 and 1957 as a champion of both Zionism and Ireland --the new lord mayor promised to make another appearance at the 1962 St. Patrick's Day parade in Manhattan, looked forward to toasting U.S. friends once more with a "Briscoe": two parts Irish whisky, one part Manischewitz wine.

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