Entrances & Exits

Alben W. Barkley, 72, and his 38-year-old Missouri bride spent four days in Manhattan that allowed them little time for private handholding. But the groom's suave old politician's charm delighted newsmen, and the bride's trousseau enchanted the photographers. Arriving from their "Shangrila" retreat in Sea Island, Ga., they went their own ways for a while on their first night in town. The Veep showed up at a stag dinner of thoroughbred racers and wowed both the turfmen and the television audience by remarking: "In order to be here I interrupted one of the loveliest honeymoons in which I have ever indulged."

Meanwhile Mrs. Barkley dropped in at the Metropolitan Opera in a bare-shouldered black evening dress that prompted the Daily News to headline: MRS. VP'S STRAPLESS GOWN KO'S TOWN. Visiting backstage after the Veep rejoined her, she obligingly posed for cameramen and confided to Tristan und Isolde Stars Helen Traubel and Lauritz Melchior: "What the boys want is some Hollywood cheesecake from me."

The next night the Veep spoke to some 2,500 bigwig Democrats at a fund-raising dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria. (Estimated net take for the Democratic National Committee: $300,000.) On the enchanted evening when the honeymooners got around to seeing South Pacific, they literally stopped the show. Entering the theater a few minutes late, they got a rousing ovation from both cast and audience. The next day they were off to a home-cooked dinner in their Washington apartment.

It was a busy week for the indefatigable young Shah of Iran. In Fort Knox, Ky., he played his first slot machine, hit a $10 jackpot which didn't pay off. In Phoenix, Ariz., he bulldogged a steer, rode a palomino named Cream of Wheat Jr., had his first date (dinner and a square dance) since his arrival with an American girl: willowy blonde Northwestern Graduate Joanne Frakes, 23, who later confessed that she had trouble remembering he was a King. "He only acted kingly a couple of times," she said, "mostly he was just like any other nice guy."

Big-Game Hunter Osa Johnson announced that she will take along her mother, frail, silver-haired Mrs. Belle Lieghty, 73, of Chanute, Kans., on her next hunting trip into the wilds of Africa early in 1950. Their goal: bagging a gorilla to take the place of famed Gargantua, who died last month in Florida.

Playwright-Author Robert E. Sherwood (Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Roosevelt and Hopkins') was the only new member elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, whose membership is limited to 50. He filled the spot vacated by the death of Historian James Truslow Adams (Founding of New England, The Living Jefferson).

Sherman Douglas, pretty, 21-year-old daughter of the U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James's, had arrived at a universal truth as she flew into New York with her grandmother to spend the Christmas holidays in the U.S. Asked if she preferred Englishmen to American men, she said thoughtfully: "Men are men, no matter where they may be."

The Solid Flesh

"I get awfully embarrassed about my legs," Betty Grable confided in Hollywood as her studio mailed to a fan the 1,500,000th copy of the famous Grable-in-a-bathing-suit photo. "People all want to know how I manage to keep them the way they are. I don't have a good answer ... I am just in luck that I happen to stem from the proper genealogical tree. I owe it all to Grannie."

Marie ("The Body") McDonald was hospitalized in Hollywood with pains in her chest. Her doctor said it was just nervousness.

Lauren Bacall cleared her throat in Hollywood and came out flatly against cheesecake: "It's a fallacy to think you look sexy just because you're wearing a low-cut gown or a tight sweater. You do it with a look ... or with your voice."

In San Francisco's gold and red plush opera house, onetime Child Prodigy Yehudi Menuhin, 33, observed the 25th anniversary of his debut as a violinist with a program of sonatas by Tartini, Bach and Beethoven. Of the concert he said: "I just go on pounding away; you could say I've passed the millionth note now."

The National Arts Foundation was making good on its promise to keep Finnish Composer Jean Sibelius (Finlandia, Valse Triste) in stogies for the rest of his life. Anticipating his 84th birthday Dec 8, the foundation started air-expressing 84 boxes of cigars to his forest cottage near Helsinki.

Less than a month after his re-election to one of the country's toughest jobs--mayor of New York--hard-working, onetime city cop William O'Dwyer, 59, was ordered by his doctors to Bellevue Hospital with "almost complete nervous and physical exhaustion." One indication that he was really relaxing: when a small fire in his kitchenette brought 22 firemen and a police detail swarming to his hospital suite, Hizzoner slept through it all.

The Furrowed Brow

Bag-eyed Fred Allen, taking a year's vacation from radio, told New York Herald Tribune Columnist John Crosby how it feels to be an "unemployed actor": "It's wonderful, this freedom. You can live on the money you save on aspirin. The only trouble is, I keep thinking of jokes and I don't know what to do with them." As for TV, Allen found it "too graphic. In radio, even a moron could visualize things his way; an intelligent man, his way. It was a custom-made suit. Television is a ready-made suit. Everyone has to wear the same . . ."

Often battered, seldom beaten Henry Armstrong, 36, who eleven years ago held three world's championships (featherweight, lightweight, welterweight), and more recently has been managing fighters, announced in California that he intends to take a punch at the devil. He expects soon to be ordained a Baptist minister, tour the country preaching to sinners.

"Please--no more," pleaded Secretary of the Interior Oscar Chapman, who found his mail loaded with paperweights after the newspapers ran a story last month saying that he collected the things as a hobby. Among the whatnots he was sent by well-wishers: a weighted mahogany gavel, a glass basin filled with coins, a porcelain pig, a bronze nude in a bronze bathtub.

Arthritis-ridden Trixie Friganza, onetime toast of the U.S. musicomedy stage, had considered TV and found it wanting, as she celebrated her 78th birthday at the Flintridge, Calif. Sacred Heart Academy, to which she repaired nine years ago to spend the rest of her life. Said Trixie: "Some of these guys that come on TV, all they need is a potato in one hand and a cabbage in the other and they'd be all ready for a ham dinner."

"It has occurred to me that Man's arrogance and aggression arises from a false feeling of transcendency," mused almost-blind Humorist James Thurber in the New York Times Magazine, on the eve of his 55th birthday. And Man "will not get anywhere until he realizes, in all humility, that he is just another of God's creatures, less kindly than Dog, possessed of less dignity than Swan."

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