The Formative Years

Dispossessed: Rumania's ex-King Michael (and family*), for "carrying on increasing maneuvers abroad against the interests of the Rumanian people." They lost 159 castles, 400,000 acres of land, 3,991,502 shares of stock, some yachts, and the right to vote the straight ticket (Communist).

The world got one of its rare glimpses of long-lipped Major General Vasily Yosifovich ("Vasya") Stalin, 28, Stalin's favorite son. /- Ogonek, a Soviet picture magazine, showed him at the controls of a plane, commanding the air show over Moscow's May Day parade (see cut).

Princess Margaret got the measles. The royal physician did a hasty finger-count, assured the world that she had had no contact, during the infectious period, with her sister Princess Elizabeth.

Linda Susan Agar, aged four months, posed for her first picture with mother Shirley Temple, 20, who not so long ago was a little shaver herself.

The Creative Struggle

Sir Thomas Beecham called off a scheduled concert of British music, explained: "When it comes down to the anvil of reality, there never has been a public for British music. Let us face the fact."

Gloria: Vanderbilt Stokowski (who wants to be known in the world of art as Glorya Stokowska) announced at the first exhibit of her painting and "paint sculpture" (see cut) that she would sell any of the 13 pictures, but only after a careful personal interview with the prospective buyer to make sure that he is really interested in the picture and not just the name on it.

Actor Maurice Evans made the mistake of asking Author Bernard Shaw to join him in a transatlantic broadcast celebrating Man and Superman's record Broadway run. He was promptly winged with a Shavian shaft:

"This is in reply to your idiotic letter . . . You imagine it will be of 'inestimable value to the box office.' What nonsense! You are playing to capacity: what more do you want? ... As for me, it's ruining me. Under this year's capital levy I have to pay the Exchequer -L-147 for every -L-100 you send me ... I am longing for it to flop before I am quite penniless, cursing the day you were born."

The Lucky Ones

The Dionne Quintuplets, 14 this week, gathered round their usual five-story birthday cake, but didn't look exactly hungry (see cut).

In Seattle, a Silver Buffalo--highest award in U.S. Scouting--was presented to Songwriter Irving Berlin at the annual banquet of the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America. The banqueters were entertained by a group of high-school singers, who for half an hour sang popular songs, all of them by Songwriter Jerome Kern. At a Manhattan Scout-o-Rama, the Cubs honored Margaret Truman with their "Grand Howl." Replied Margaret: "Woo!"

Historian Charles A. Beard, in a solemn Manhattan ceremony at the National Institute of Arts and Letters, received the Gold Medal in spite of Critic Lewis Mumford, who resigned from the Institute over it. Mumford didn't want to pass out any medals to so partisanly isolationist a historian. Official Medal-Pinner Van Wyck Brooks took pains to point out in his speech that the members were paying homage to "the qualities in his life and his work about which they agree." Besides, he said, Beard had "exposed ... the idea that historians could ever be entirely objective." Historian Beard took the medal but uttered not a word. Among the new members who were to be formally inducted (but failed to show up): Novelist John Dos Passes, Poet W. H. Auden, Composer-Critic Virgil Thomson and Critic Bernard De Voto.

The Way Things Are

The Duchess of Windsor was beginning to worry a little about the outlook in the housekeeping situation, she confided to Columnist Elsa Maxwell. "I think," said the Duchess, "I'll eventually take two rooms somewhere, do my own washing and cooking."

In London, the seventh Duke of Wellington, great-grandson of the hawk-nosed original, dutifully opened an exhibition of modern sculpture with an appropriate speech, but midway raised his own gallinaceous nose and broke out: "And now about modern sculpture--I really cannot make out what it is all about."

University of Chicago's Chancellor Robert M. Hutchins advised German educators not to model themselves after the U.S.: "Americans have never had to be intelligent. America has grown rich and strong not because of its system of education but in spite of it. Only a wealthy and powerful country could survive an educational system so lacking in logic and ultimate aim . . ."

"I adore humanity!" cried the visiting Princess Irene of Greece to a Manhattan interviewer. "I think everybody is interesting . . . Just people I adore. I have never met a stupid person in my life."

*His father, Carol, received the treatment two months ago (TIME, March 1).

/- The other, Yasha Djugashvili, was Stalin's son by his first wife, Katerina. Vasya and sister Svetlana, 23, are children of Stalin's second wife, Allilueva, who died in 1932.

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