Only a few miles from the row over integration at the University of Mississippi, home fires burned brightly for Negro Soprano Leontyne Price, 35. Returning to her native city of Laurel (pop. 27,889) after a third triumphant season with the Metropolitan Opera, she drew a standing ovation from an informally integrated audience of 2,000 whites and Negroes at a benefit concert for St. Paul's Methodist Church. Glowed Leontyne: "This is the only place where I can be at peace with myself, except Rome. New York was meant for work. Here at home I can eat too much and sleep too much,"

U.N. Secretary-General U Thant, who comes from neutralist Burma and occupies the world's most neutralized job, allowed himself a little partisanship when asked a press conference question about the U.S. delegate: "In my experience of public men, I have very rarely come across a statesman of Ambassador Adlai Stevenson's stature--with mellow wisdom, perceptive thinking and balanced judgment. He has been representing his country in the United Nations with eminence and with extraordinary competence."

Sir Winston chose his official biographer: rambunctious Randolph, 51, his son, the journalist. The prodigious task calls for five volumes, or some 1,250,000 words. Four researchers, two secretaries and an archivist are already closeted in the Churchill mansion in Suffolk, sifting through 300,000 unpublished papers. And Randolph is still calling for more from "anyone who can send letters from or about Sir Winston or any firsthand recollections of him."

The French are a family people, and the Alps in Savoy were beginning to look like the gathering of the clan. At Meribel-les-Allues was Brigitte Bardot, just divorced again, and her ever-steady Sami Frey. Just a yodel away at Megeve was her ex-husband. Director Roger (And God Created Woman) Vadim, 35, with his constant protegee and fiancee of 18 months, pert Cinemactress Catherine Deneuve, 19, who blissfully posed for photographers and even offered the reporter from Paris-Presse her secret clue to success. "To keep the love of a man," said she, "a woman should restrain herself from becoming his official wife."

The 38 Immortals of the sedate Academie Franc,aise recently received an intriguing parcel from an unknown donor. In the mail came the most literary pornographic novel since the Marquis de Sade. Called L'Histoire d'O, it once moved Catholic Paul Claudel to remark, "All priests should read it so they may have an exact sense of sin." The parcel was intended to prejudice academicians against electing the man who had written the book's preface. Jean Paulhan, 78, and who is widely suspected of having written the novel himself under a pseudonym. A grand mandarin of French letters, Paulhan is director of the influential Nouvelle Revue Franc,aise. "Even to set the covers of L'Histoire d'O ajar is to open the gates of hell," said Academician Franc,ois Mauriac. Nevertheless, enough members were inclined to open the academy's gates to Paulhan, who was elected the 39th Immortal.

Throughout his long and lustrous career, Composer Igor Stravinsky, 80, has consistently refused the degrees and formal honors that accompany fame. But since 1959, at the invitation of New Mexico's affable Roman Catholic Archbishop Edwin V. Byrne, Stravinsky (himself devoutly Russian Orthodox) has traveled to Santa Fe to conduct such works as his magnificent Symphony of Psalms in the city's St. Francis' Cathedral. Now Byrne urged him to accept from Pope John

XXIII one of the church's highest honors: Knight Commander with the Star of St. Sylvester. Wrote Stravinsky to Byrne: "I am deeply touched by this gesture and I am glad to accept it."

"In a way, I hate to lose him," said the warden. "Where else could I get an intelligent, dedicated man who is glad to work 15 hours a day, seven days a week?" For six and a half years, Orville Enoch Hodge had been a model prisoner at Menard Penitentiary. The jovial Illinois state auditor who was talked of as a future Governor until he was caught embezzling $1,450,000 from the taxpayers, spent his time teaching classes on how to run a bulldozer, broadcasting as the prison's disk jockey. Now 58 and leaving on parole, Hodge was headed for Granite City to take a job as a clerk in his sister's hardware store.

Ill lay: Bing Crosby, 58, mending in Santa Monica after an operation for kidney stones: Brendan Behan, 37, diabetic but enthusiastically tosspot Irish playwright; into a Dublin hospital for the fourth time in 18 months. Moaned Wife Beatrice: "It's the usual trouble--too much gargle."

She goes by her real name now, Suzanne Charpentier, and pastures a flock of sheep on her 26-acre farm in the Pyrenees. But Annabella, the beautiful French movie star of the 1930s who went to Hollywood, married Tyrone Power, and became a U.S. citizen, still feels the lure of her name in lights. Popping up in Paris to see herself in a revival of Rene Clair's 1931 screen classic, Le Million, Annabella, now a graceful 53, enjoyed the movie hugely. "It brought memories of an unforgettable youth--like an immense burst of laughter." She was sad, though, about one thing--the U.S. citizenship she gave up to return to France to care for her ailing mother. "In my heart I'm always an American."

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