At its world premiere in Bangkok, The Ugly American seemed to misfire, but Star Marlon Brando, 39, scored a clean hit. Off-screen he suavely discussed Buddhism with Thailand's King Bhumibol and told beautiful Queen Sirikit, "I have heard many wonderful things about you, but they do not compare with what you really are." Good-Will Ambassador Brando was "genuinely overwhelmed by the gentle Thai people. Smiles are pretty hard to come by on Hollywood and Vine." But when a little old lady chewing betel nut asked what he did for a living, Marlon went right back to the mumbles. "I sometimes wonder," he mused, adding, "... I make faces."

New Yorkers noted the day proclaimed in tribute to "that grand citizen," former Democratic Governor and U.S. Senator Herbert H. Lehman. Recuperating from a broken hip, Lehman spent his 85th birthday in a wheelchair, still enjoyed a Hotel Plaza dinner-dance for some 300 friends, a ceremony at home, then Scribner's publication of a Lehman biography by Historian Allan Nevins.

Elevated since 1959 to fashion's Hall of Fame as a Best-Dressed pacesetter "above annual comparison," Mrs. William S. Paley, wife of the board chairman of Columbia Broadcasting System, lost some of her most dazzling finery when a cat burglar raided the Paley estate in suburban Manhasset, L.I. Included in the swag were a 12-carat emerald and diamond ring valued at $77,000, a $50,000 diamond necklace containing 78 stones, other baubles and bangles, for a total haul of $193,200. "There was," said a CBS spokesman, "other jewelry in the house that he didn't get."

Like the Kennedys of Massachusetts, the Longs of Louisiana are a perennially blooming family tree. This season has Congressman Gillis Long, 39, distant cousin of deceased Governors Huey and Earl, declaring himself a gubernatorial hopeful for 1964. Then there is another cousin, State Senator Speedy O. Long, 34; Speedy wants the governor's mansion too, but U.S. Senator Russell B. Long has already pledged support to Cousin Gillis. Meanwhile, Mrs. Blanche Long --Earl's widow and Russell's aunt by marriage--says that she will manage the campaign of a third candidate, not related, Louisiana's Public Service Commissioner John McKeithen. Come primary time next December, the kissin' cousins are apt to be all puckered out.

Said the West Point Yearbook Howitzer in 1944: "Another four-star general? Maybe. But he wants to be a writer." In 1950, he earned an M.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia, while his father was president of the university. Last week the pen finally proved mightier than the sword for Lieut. Colonel John S. D. Eisenhower, 42. Ending a nearly two-year Army leave of absence to research Dad's unfinished memoir on The White House Years, Young Ike resigned his commission to join Manhattan Publishers Doubleday & Company. Inc. as a nonfiction editor of history and biography. "This was not an easy thing to do," said John, who had only two years to go before qualifying for retirement and a $372.50 monthly pension.

HAS THE ROYAL TOUR BEEN A FLOP? asked London's Daily Mirror, highlighting a spate of conjecture in the British press that Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, now home again in Windsor Castle, had not rung a smashing success with their visits to Fiji, New Zealand and Australia. Too much pomp and pageantry, said pundits, and the Queen drew better crowds when she trekked Down Under in 1954. While the second-guessing made for brisk teatime talk, seasoned observers insisted that times had changed, that's all--the novelty of a radiant young ruler may have faded a bit, but loyalty to the Crown remains strong. And why stand in the hot sun all day when Her Majesty looks so loverly on TV?

On his own royal tour of Australia, Jazz King Louis Armstrong denied he would retire. "I'm going to go on playing," he said, "till the good Lord cuts me down."

Words were the weapons chosen for a bookish little feud between Presidential Adviser Arthur Schlesinger Jr., 45, and Conservative Editor William F. Buckley Jr., 37. It all began with a jacket blurb on Buckley's new book, Rumbles Left and Right, which quotes Schlesinger on Buckley: "He has a facility for rhetoric which I envy, as well as a wit which I seek clumsily and vainly to emulate." Soon there were rumbles from Schlesinger, whose lawyer wanted the quote expunged. For one thing, Schlesinger had never read the book, and his remark, made during a 1961 debate, "reeked with sarcasm." Scarcely blinking, Buckley sallied forth anew: "There is a good case to be made for everyone apologizing who has ever quoted Arthur Schlesinger."

Registering some complaints before a Federal District Court judge, Robert F. Stroud, 73, the Birdman of Alcatraz, wanted to know why prison officials at the U.S. Medical Center in Springfield, Mo., won't even let him read the book--much less see the movie--based on his own life story. The fact is, argued U.S. Attorney Russell Millin, they just don't show crime movies, or even read the books in prison. "I'm not interested in crime movies," said Stroud, adding a TV program note: "Anyway, how about The Untouchables'? They show that."

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