Change of Pace

Brock Pemberton, veteran producer of Broadway plays--Kiss the Boys Goodbye (1938), Harvey (1944)--stepped before the klieg lights for a Hollywood screen test. "I don't expect anything will come of it," he grumbled afterwards. "I just did it for the experience ... I imagine that my investment of some $5 for renting [a costume] will be wasted."

Harrison ("Bones") Dillard, world-record hurdler and Olympic-champion sprinter, who has reaped reams of publicity on the track, took off his spikes and put on another pair of shoes: he set to work grinding out publicity for the Cleveland Indians baseball team.

Dwight Eisenhower, according to Bridge Expert Ely Culbertson, is a tough man across the bridge table: "Classic, sound, with occasional flashes of brilliance." Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson (Ike's sometime partner) also rated with Expert Culbertson as "the best player on the Supreme Court or any other." Army Chief of Staff General Omar Bradley was acknowledged "an outstanding strategist; he takes more chances than Eisenhower." Tops on Culbertson's list of Government players: Major General A. M. Gruenther, of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"What the art world needs is to get rid of the bright people--the intellectuals," declared roughhewn Painter Thomas Hart Benton, in New Orleans on a lecture tour. "There are too many intellectuals anyway. Theoretically it's possible for an artist to be an intellectual, but it's not likely . . . Artists don't need brains."

Veteran Cinemactor Clark Gable, victim of many a make-up man and wardrobe mistress, found that he could also dish it out. At a Manhattan party, his impromptu costume designing bested the efforts of Publisher William Randolph Hearst Jr. and Violinist Nathan Milstein. Artistically flinging yard goods around bathing-suited models, Gable achieved outstanding success by making Model Charlotte Hanker appear to be having just as much fun as he was.

Change of Scene

Artist Grandma Moses, 88, who rarely strays far from Eagle Bridge, N.Y. for subject matter for her famed primitives, was unimpressed with New York City. "It's nice to be here," she admitted cautiously, "but the city don't appeal to me." "As picture material?" somebody asked. "As any material," she replied, firmly. Then she took the train down to Washington, where she got the Women's National Press Club annual award for art, and the even more impressive compliment of unwavering attention from President

Truman and six prominent U.S. women.

New York's Governor Thomas E. Dewey, on a five-week holiday in Europe, announced to British reporters: "I have no earth-shaking announcements." But this week he talked to members of the House of Commons, off the record, about the U.S. in world affairs.

Mrs. Wendell L Willkie, 58, and son Philip, 29, Indiana state legislator, were badly shaken up and bruised when their car, headed home to Rushville from Washington, skidded on a wet highway near Fairview, Ohio and overturned.

Leaving Berlin after four years, General Lucius D. Clay, commander of the U.S. occupation forces, got a parting gift from Berlin's city fathers: they voted to change the name of the street he lived on from Im Dol to Claystrasse.

Oldtime Cinemactress Janet Gaynor (Seventh Heaven, 1927) and Designer-Husband Gilbert Adrian arrived home safe & sound after a six-week safari through Darkest Africa, just in time to catch a breathless Vogue preview of their trip: "Apart from several happy forays into Abercrombie & Fitch's Dr. Livingstone department, neither of the Adrians had had any experience as explorers. Their plans, not to shoot, but, rather, to admire the animals ('an enormous love of animals is our principal motive') modified the equipment situation somewhat . . . There would be a few days in Nairobi where dinner dress would be needed . . . Rather than take a chance on finding in the African shops an exploring costume in her size (almost no ready-made clothes anticipate her doll-like proportions)," Mrs. Adrian bought them in Manhattan. For the trip up river she wore "an oyster-white silk Shantung suit made (where better?) in her husband's workrooms; and as an alternate for the skirt a pair of Shantung slacks . . ." Mr. Adrian's equipment for the trek: "a picnic hamper . . . an out-of-doors stove, an alarm-clock wristwatch, a Rube Goldberg knife-is-a-can-opener-is-a-whistle . . ."

The Little Things that Count

Martita (The Madwoman of Chaillot) Hunt and Lee J. (Death of a Salesman) Cobb rated bravos as the best actors of the Broadway season from the toughest audience of all: Manhattan's drama critics. Basso Ezio (South Pacific) Pinza nudged aside Alfred (Kiss Me, Kate) Drake as the best musicomedy male. Mary (South Pacific) Martin danced off with all the votes for top musicomedienne.

Winston Churchill sent a little bread-&-butter present, delivered by hand by daughter Sarah, to Bernard Baruch, his host on his recent U.S. trip (TIME, April 4): a 24-by-36-inch Winston Churchill watercolor landscape.

The late Rabbi Stephen S. Wise got a memorial: the congregation of the Free Synagogue, which he founded in 1907, voted to change its name to the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue.

Rita Hayworth, whose wedding to Aly Khan is set for May 27, got full approval and a few thoughtful suggestions from Couturier Jacques Fath. "If I were Rita," he mused, "I would be married in white . . . white crepe with the panels in the skirt and the decolletage like this . . ." He gestured sweepingly downward. "I always make the deep decolletage for Rita," he explained, "because she has a strong bosom. It minimizes it, but one can see very clearly still that it is there."

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