Deanna Durbin, 25, flouted Hollywood tradition by announcing the breakup of her marriage in a barely audible voice. (The marriage, to 45-year-old Scenarist Felix Jackson, was her second.) Deanna had her attorney murmur simply: "There is no difficulty ... of any particular public interest. Each of them declines to discuss the matter. . . ."

The Johnny Weissmuller story was more in the classic mold. The mother of Allene Gates, a 22-year-old California golfer, announced that Johnny and her daughter were going to be married, just as soon as Johnny and his third wife got their impending divorce.

Actress Buff Cobb, 21, granddaughter of the late Humorist Irvin S. Cobb, sued her second husband for divorce after seven months of marriage. She said that the husband, Actor William Eythe, had hit her a couple of times last fall. Two days later, in a seesawing mood, she called the whole thing off.

Questions & Answers

"We all like to try a twist at the tail of the cosmos," wrote the late "Great Dissenter," Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, to a philosopher friend. The letters, published for the first time last week, were composed in a scrawl and were knotty with Holmesian twists:

P: "The chief end of man is to frame general ideas--and ... no general idea is worth a straw.

P: "A man begins a pursuit as a means of keeping alive--he ends by following it at the cost of his life. . . . Morality is simply another means of living, but the Saints make it an end in itself."

P: "I think we are at one in not believing that man can swallow the universe. . . .

I do not believe that a shudder would go through the sky if our whole ant heap were kerosened. But then, it might--in short, my only belief is that I know nothing about it."

"Marxists all over the world . . . naturally tend to arrive at similar conclusions," observed U.S. Communist Party Boss William Zebulon Foster. It was his reply to the New York Herald Tribune's question: Had he ever as party head differed with statements from Russia? Other questions & answers: Is the party loyal to the U.S. Constitution? "Yes. Our party is an ardent defender of the limited democracy that we have. . . ."Does the party advocate forcible overthrow of the Government? "The danger of violence . . . always comes from reactionary elements...."

P: "Poverty brooded threatens and failures multiply," brooded Novelist-turned-Scenarist Rupert Hughes, in a thoughtful piece for Variety. "There is no laughter left. The whips of scorn make the naked flesh wince and the bruised pariah cower and slink. . . . These are cloudy days for the motion picture world. And it is a world. A new world. But, like other worlds, it revolves from night to day and back to night and back to day again and again."

"The inane inclination of the average American to ... almost genuflect at the presence of a European title, phony or otherwise," snarled Sinclair Lewis, "is, to my mind ... a pathetic demonstration of sycophants. ... I wish the British would test our ridiculous national sub servience by offering a few of their hollow titles in the American open market . . . just to see who would leap at the chance to buy one." Columnist Elsa Maxwell reported that Author John Gunther (Inside U.S.A.) had told her he was reading Thucydides' Peloponnesian War "to learn all about modern politics and modern war." Added Elsa: "Maybe I didn't grab my old Thucydides that night."

Wear & Tear

Noel Coward, back in the U.S. on another show-business trip, put his stick away and walked upright after a shaky spell with rheumatic fever.

Greece's Prince Peter, 39-year-old anthropologist (and cousin of King Paul), was still in good shape after sampling the native customs of Manhattan. In the U.S. for a lecture tour, the Prince and his pretty Princess Irene submitted themselves to a subway ride and hot dogs at a Times Square stand-up counter. They then returned to the Ritz-Carlton.

Charles A. Lindbergh, as durably boyish-looking as any celebrity of modern times, was beginning, at 45, to show signs of wear & tear. Week before in Hong Kong (on airline business, he said), he had asked the press to report practically nothing about him at all; now in Tokyo he forbade photographs; but the press went on working anyway.

Iraq's twelve-year-old King Feisal, in Switzerland on a winter vacation, went skiing at Villars, broke his left leg.

Poet-Biographer Carl Sandburg turned a wind-blown 70, got two public parties: one in Chicago, where old friends and literary lights gave him a wire-recorder (to record his balladry); the other in his native Galesburg, Ill., where Knox College gave him a cake and Sandburg gave an address. The Lincoln man cleared up a point about himself: "My father was . . . a Republican. I voted for Eugene Debs and Hoover, and if Eisenhower is nominated will vote for him. I am an independent or maybe a mugwump."

Nods & Becks

Francisco Franco of Spain and Juan Domingo Peron of Argentina suddenly pelted each other with goodies. From Franco to Peron: 100 cases (1,404 bottles) of Spanish wines & liquors. From Peron to Franco: five blooded horses, one bull, one cow, one heifer.

Bob Hope was named Honorary Mayor of Palm Springs, Calif.

Eleanor Roosevelt got another honorary degree (LL. D.), this time from Queens University in Kingston, Ontario.

Hirohito won admiring attention from the Nippon Times, which disclosed to its readers that the emperor was one of the few men in the world who can take a fan between his toes and fan himself. What is more, pursued the Times, "he is able to perform this stunt while swimming."

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