The Pursuit of Knowledge

U.S. higher education received an unusual recruit last week. "Sunny" Ainsworth, 20, thrice-married seventh wife of Playboy Thomas ("Tommy") Franklyn Manville Jr., breezed across the University of Chicago's sweltering campus to take her three-hour aptitude test, first hurdle on her way to matriculation. Sunny was as refreshing as a breath from the Pump Room.

She was also something of a challenge to the University of Chicago's new placement-test system for college candidates, which is itself a challenge to the oldfangled college-entrance system.

Last month Chicago's President Robert Maynard Hutchins threw up the window to let a little fresh air into that system, threw out the old-style high-school credit requirements. He substituted a series of quizzes to test the students' actual knowledge and ability to learn. The tests take more than 13 hours, cover the humanities, the social sciences, the physical sciences and English. Cried President Hutchins: "Educational bookkeeping" has been abolished. Educators wondered.

What the Hell. So did Sunny Ainsworth. Not that the aptitude test was hard. "I didn't do anything flashy," she said, "but I guess I got by." After the three hours' grilling in the boiler-room temperature of Cobb Hall, Sunny's slightly hennaed hair was still schoolgirlishly neat, but her academic comment was caustic. "I can't understand," she said, "why the University of Chicago gives tests like this. They're poorly made up, if you know what I mean, and I don't think they show what kind of a mind you have, though I guess that's what they're supposed to do. I can't figure out what the hell it was for frankly."

Right between the Eyes. "What do you want to be educated for?" Tommy Manville once asked Sunny. As their married life lasted only seven hours, he never learned the answer. Sunny herself is a little vague about it. "My friends say I'm crazy but I've wanted an education all my life, and if I don't get it now I never will."

Sunny's thirst for knowledge is something of an anticlimax in a short but eventful life. She grew up in Matagorda, Tex., where her father was an oil man--"I guess you'd call him a wildcatter." He was also, says Sunny, "sort of a heller." One day he was shot in a Texas hotel room ("Right between the eyes," says Sunny). Nobody ever found out why.

In grade school Sunny skipped second, fourth and sixth grades. But she had scarcely been graduated from high school as her class valedictorian when she married ("unfortunately, and you can say that") one Edwin Ettinger. Edwin was 28, Sunny 15. After five months--an alltime marital endurance record for Sunny--she left him.

Marriage left her with a daughter (now four) and a feeling that pregnancy is woman's happiest state. "Gee, I'd like to be pregnant again! " says Sunny reminiscently. "It was lots of fun."

Dave Was Wonderful. Later Sunny went to work at Earl Carroll's in Holly wood, where she met David Moran, 24, brother of Actress Peggy Moran and Carroll's financial counsel. Sunny and David were married in 1941, parted after five days, were divorced last year. "Dave was wonderful to me," she says.

In Manhattan President Hutchins' future student worked as a Powers model and night club entertainer. The Manville ro mance occurred last August. Sunny is not at all resentful because their marriage lasted only seven hours ("That really didn't matter as I didn't plan to stay with him anyway"). Sunny admits she married Tommy to get money to wage a legal battle with her aunt to recover custody of her daughter.

Invasion Danger. Currently, Sunny is eager to unload the Manville engagement ring (a 16 1/2-carat diamond; value: $16,000). "God," she says, "I want to sell that ring before the Allies go into The Netherlands and the price of diamonds drops."

Before Sunny can invade the University of Chicago, she still must pass the rigid test of feminine intuition to be applied by Valerie Wickhem, Director of Admissions, who says ominously she "will have to look into the elements of sensationalism in Sunny's life." But Sunny has an anchor to windward: she is negotiating for a part in School for Brides, the play based on those same elements of sensationalism.

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