Comings & Goings

Montana's Democratic Governor John Woodrow Bonner, 47, on his way to Biloxi, Miss, to make a speech, ran into a spot of trouble in New Orleans' French Quarter. New Orleans Cab Driver Philip Bellinger tried to piece together the story for reporters: "This guy came up to me on Canal Street. He was kinda stinkin', I guess. He told me he was the governor of Montana. We got a lot of tourists get to thinking they're governor sometime or other. I didn't believe this guy, but I told him I'd help him to cash a check . . ." Eight or nine hotspots later, said Bollinger, they wound up at a "girly show," and the man who claimed to be governor still hadn't been able to cash a check. When he got too noisy the cops arrested him as a drunk, locked him up for six hours, let him out when he sobered up. Said the husky, family-man governor, father of five: "I just did some drinking like any other visitor. I guess I had too much." On second, sober thought, he told reporters that there was "something mysterious about the whole thing," assured the A.P. in his home state, by long distance, that the story had been "grossly exaggerated."

Nebraska's Senator Kenneth Wherry earned some unexpected pocket money as a guide when he showed 14 women from his home state around the Capitol building. As a joke, each of the women pressed a dime into his hand at the end of the tour. Wherry blushed, stammered and tried to return the money, but the giggling ladies would have none of it. The Senator sent the $1.40 along to the Nebraska Cancer Society.

Addressing the annual meeting of the Travelers Aid Society of New York, Perle Mesta, the U.S.'s party-throwing Minister to Luxembourg, announced: "I love my job and I'm not seeking any other post."

There seemed to be not a dull moment anywhere for Maestro Ariuro Toscanini, 83, and his barnstorming NBC Symphony Orchestra. In Dallas, a cloudburst drenched 4,600 people just at concert time. Women hiked up their long evening dresses and men peeled off their shoes and socks and waded through deep puddles to get to the Fair Park Auditorium. Next day, Toscanini's son Walter conked a Los Angeles newspaper photographer with a movie camera for popping a flashbulb too close to the Maestro as they stepped off a plane.

In London, on his 67th birthday, Field Marshal Earl Wavell, who fought hard and well in North Africa against Field Marshal Erwin ("Desert Fox") Rommel, underwent a serious abdominal operation.

Princess Elena of Rumania, better known before her 1947 marriage as Mme. Magda Lupescu, came to grief while visiting the International Stamp Exhibition at London's Grosvenor House with her husband and longtime (23 years) royal lover, former King Carol of Rumania. The princess caught her heel at the top of a short flight of stairs, tumbled, landed in a mink-clad heap twelve steps below. Damage: a badly bruised right leg.

Hearls & Flowers

Looking scared, but still beautiful in a billowy white satin $1,200 wedding gown (a gift of M-G-M), Cinemactress Elizabeth Taylor became the bride of Conrad Nicholson Hilton Jr., 23, son of the hotelman. A crowd of 600 people jammed the candlelit Beverly Hills Church of the Good Shepherd; 2,500 more lined the streets outside. The young folks (the bride had just recovered from a cold in her chest) left for a four-part honeymoon: a night in Santa Monica; a week in Carmel, Calif.; a week in Manhattan; three months in Europe.

In Bad Homburg, Germany, Tennis Star Gertrude ("Gorgeous Gussie") Moran teamed up with U.S. High Commissioner John J. McCloy, soundly beat (6-3, 6-3) Lady Elisabeth Macready, wife of the British economic adviser, and Lawrence Phillips, a McCloy associate. Pressed by reporters, Gussie later summed up the current state of her romantic life: "I am not engaged. At least, I don't think so."

Bandleader Xavier Cugat, 50, called in the press in Boston, announced that he would marry his band's songstress, Abbe Lane, 18, if he ever gets a divorce from his second wife. Then he turned to his fiancee and said gently: "Go down to your mother and take a nap before the show. Rest."

Named by veteran Movie Director Clarence (Intruder in the Dust) Brown, after 35 years in the movie business, as the five greatest lovers in screen history: John Barrymore, Charles Boyer, Clark Gable, John Gilbert, Rudolph Valetino.

The Laurels

Crowned, in Bangkok: Boston-born King Phumiphon, who had just returned from his honeymoon. The music-loving king (he sold five songs to a Broadway musical show now in rehearsal) lifted a nine-tiered crown onto his head as army & navy guns fired 101 salutes and the temple bells of every monastery in his kingdom rang seven times. He thus became Rama IX, King of Siam.

Awarded an around-the-world flight by the One World Award Committee, Inc., in Manhattan: Roger Nash Baldwin, former director, now chairman, of the National Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union, "in recognition of ... 30 years of outstanding work . . . and for his contribution to the formulation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."

Presented in Manhattan to Bernard Baruch, 79, who has worn a hearing-aid for almost a decade: the 1950 Hearing Advancement Award of the Hearing Foundation, a promotional organization.

Honored by the Barter Theater of Abingdon, Va.: Actress Shirley Booth, for her playing of a slattern in Broadway's Come Back, Little Sheba. The award: "one Virginia ham and a platter to eat it off of," and an acre of Virginia land.

Signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to play opposite Fred Astaire in a forthcoming movie called Royal Wedding: Actress Sarah Churchill, 35, daughter of Winston Churchill.

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