Food, Sex & Volcanoes

Pablo Picasso has written a play--in six short acts--about The Two Little Doggies (who make one big dog) and their friends Fat Anguish, Skinny Anguish, The Round End, The Big Foot, The Onion, The Tart (pastry), Silence and The Curtains. The cast is now looking for a home on Broadway for fall occupancy, but may have difficulty finding one. The play, Le Desir Attrape par la Queue (Desire Caught by the Tail), is concerned chiefly with food and sex. The Tart is onstage almost continually in nothing but a pair of stockings. And for the most part Picasso writes as he paints. An example:

"[Big Foot] is beautiful as a star it's a dream repainted in watercolors on a pearl ... his whole body is full of the light of a thousand lighted electric bulbs--his trousers are inflated with all the perfumes of Arabia his hands are transparent peace and pistachio ice cream--the oysters of his eyes enclose suspended gardens. . . ."

The Federal Board of Geographic Names broke the spell of a muggy July day with an ice-cold footnote to history: Franklin Roosevelt had once declined the honor of having an Antarctic sea named for him. The President had informed the board that he would much prefer "a smoking volcano" to a frozen ocean. The board informed the President that it was fresh out of smoking volcanoes.

Captain John Eisenhower, whose father had just expressed interest in the Army's chow (TIME, July 21), enrolled in a cooking class at Georgia's Fort Benning. Was that, a reporter wondered, a reflection on the culinary prowess of his bride? "Absolutely not," said John, adding a thoughtful hedge: "Perhaps it makes me a more critical judge."

In the Purple

Elizabeth & Philip would have a wedding with all the trimmings, after all. The public had shouted down all suggestions of an "austerity" affair. The ceremony would be held in Westminster Abbey, a Government spokesman said, probably in October. But it was "unlikely that . . . peers will be required to wear all their robes. . . . The moths have been in them."

King Haakcon VII came in for a little court jesting on the eve of his 75th birthday. Norway's Danish-born monarch granted audience to Danish-born Axel Lund, who runs a number of Norwegian hotels. The King said that he was happy to meet a Dane who had done so well in Norway. Replied Lund: "So am I, Your Majesty."

Rita Hayworth was queen for a night in London. At the world premiere of her latest picture, Down to Earth, her adoring, howling subjects milled so thickly about the theater entrance that she had to slip in by the stage door. Her Ministers of Publicity then hustled her out front to meet some courtiers: Anthony Eden, who looked pleasantly unimpressed, and U.S. Ambassador Lewis Douglas, who seemed to like what he saw. Then Rita was enthroned beside the Duchess of Gloucester, sister-in-law of King George VI, to watch the show.

In the Pink

There had been signs that George Bernard Shaw was mellowing in his lonesome latter years. Lately, when newsmen had rung up his Ayot St. Lawrence home,, the phone was answered immediately, as though he had been waiting beside it for someone to call. And long after he had answered reporters' questions, he would prattle on as though he pined for conversation.

But last week, on his gist birthday, his beard bristled as of old. "Get out! Go!" he railed at a London Evening Standard newsman who had distantly referred to his birthday. "The man who even utters the word 'birthday' . . . is no friend of mine. . . . Good afternoon. Don't come again."

His health was better than last year (though his legs gave him some trouble), and his mind still seemed as cold a lancet as ever probed an infection. He wrote recently: "Parliament men . . . keep declaring that the British parliamentary system is one of the greatest blessings British political genius has given the world; and the world has taken it at its self-valuation . . . always with the same result: political students . . . exposing such frightful social evils . . . Parliament ignoring them as long as possible. . . ." Of Marx's Das Kapital: "Little Dorrit is a more seditious book . . . All over Europe men and women are in prison for pamphlets and speeches which are to Little Dorrit as red pepper to dynamite." Said Shaw's literary executor, Dr. F. E. Loewenstein, in birthday tribute: "We have not yet heard the last of Shaw. He might still be hanged as a rebel or canonized as a saint. . . ."

Monty Woolley, who has played The Man Who Came to Dinner on stage, on screen & off for the last eight years, finally had to put in for stomach repairs. In Albany, he had a "successful" operation, was soon feeling well enough to go right back into character. When an interne accidentally entered his room, Woolley glared and blared: "Have we been introduced?" Interne: "No." Woolley (beard bristling): "Then get out!"

The Political Animal

Andrei Gromyko explained the party line on Victor Kravchenko, the ex-Communist who wrote I Chose Freedom and has now chosen to testify on Russian espionage before a House committee (see PRESS). Said Gromyko: "When a dog has nothing to do, it licks its underbelly. Sometimes this attracts spectators."

John Nance Garner made some amends to history. After announcing last month that he had built a bonfire of his political records, "Cactus Jack" relented and gave the University of Texas 34 scrapbooks he had preserved. Thirty contained old newspaper clips, but four were a treasure house of place cards, menus, invitations to luncheons, plus a daily social squib in Mrs. Garner's own hand.

Secretary of State George C. Marshall had a slight diplomatic exchange in Frederick, Md. He got lost while driving to a friend's house there; after cruising for almost an hour was set straight by a passerby, who observed: "You have a big job on your hands, General." Replied Marshall: "If I don't do any better than I did driving ... I won't do so well."

Over Their Shoulders

And who was to blame for Italy's being in history's junk yard? Italy's witty ex-Premier Francesco Nitti named a couple of safe scapegoats: Christopher Columbus and Niccolo Machiavelli. Machiavelli, Nitti explained, had "made us Italians out as men who are always ready to lie," Columbus was an even bigger culprit: his "indiscretion," Nitti claimed, had "shifted the axis of the world to the West," and Italy had been off the beam ever since.

From Paris, Painter-Photographer Man Ray, Philadelphia's gift to surrealism, looked back at Philadelphia and said: "I prefer the sadness of Paris to all the joys of the United States." Then he adjusted the leather shoestring that served him as a tie and, looking back from 57 on his "lost generation," concluded: "The greatest of life's adventures lie in normalcy and well-being."

The chivalry of General George S. Patton lived after him in a tale told by a German slave-laborer. The laborer, who said he had worked as a U.S. counter-intelligence agent after V-E day, claimed he had found Frau Martin Bormann, wife of Hitler's chief deputy, operating a kindergarten in the Austrian Tyrol in 1945. He also found that she was dying of cancer. The agent reported his discovery to Third Army HQ, was told General Patton's decision: "The woman should be allowed to die in peace." She did, a few months later, said the agent.

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