In the Family

The workaday schoolrooms of Ottawa's Joan of Arc Institute were bright with holiday colors as proud fathers & mothers gathered for the annual Christmas pageant. Word soon got around that a distinguished family was in the audience: Canada's Governor General Viscount Alexander of Tunis, his wife Lady Alexander and their two sons, Shane and Brian. Then everyone quieted down to watch the nursery school actors dance and do their little play called Where Do You Come From, Shepherd ?

One of the nursery angels, a 3 1/2-year-old all tinseled and white, who pirouetted through the dance routines, caught a photographer's attention. When the show was over, he decided to find out who she was and get a picture of her with her family. The picture broke one of Ottawa's best kept secrets. When the photographer asked who her parents were, the little girl led him to the Governor General, who later explained it all. The child's name was Susan Alexander. Three years ago on a trip to England the Alexanders adopted her. They brought her back to Canada, where she has lived ever since in the privacy of the viceregal residence. The Christmas pageant was Susan's first public appearance.

Cultural Pursuits

Just before a scheduled concert with the Dallas Symphony, Wagnerian Soprano Astrid Varnay got a phone call from the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan. Soprano Helen Traubel was ill. Could Miss Varnay come to the rescue? Miss Varnay finished her concert and grabbed a plane, arrived at the Met at 6 p.m., rehearsed until the 7:30 curtain rose on Gotterddmmerung and her Met debut as Briinnhilde.

Orson Welles, who has had his share of curtain boos and offstage hisses, found that his mere presence in an audience could be hooted too. When he arrived at Dublin's Gate Theater to see a play, he was greeted at the theater door by a banner-waving picket line whose signs read "Not wanted, Orson Welles, Stalin's star . . . Dublin rejects Communistic front star . . ." But inside, Welles got cheers when he said: "I am not a Communist. I never was a Communist. I came here to see a play." He also got a character reference of sorts from Hilton Edwards, his actor friend who is also co-owner of the theater: "So long as I have known him, Welles has been trying to be a capitalist."

In London, Buckingham. Palace Guest Ruth Draper was given the honorary rank of Commander of the Order of the British Empire. The decoration was recently presented personally by King George VI, whose father & mother first enjoyed Actress Draper's character sketches at a performance in Windsor Castle back in 1927.

After a tour of Israel, where his sitters included President Chaim Weizman, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, a few "men in the street," and members of the cabinet, Sculptor Jo Davidson arrived in Paris with a group of plaster busts to be cast in bronze. It was the beginning of a Davidson project to make a bronze history of the new country.

Santa Fe Artist Randall Davey, who has painted such celebrities as John Galsworthy, James Forrestal and Madame Schumann-Heinle, but is better known for his race track studies, was busily putting some final strokes on another famous face: the Chicago Tribune's Colonel Robert R. McCormick.

Good Examples

In Rangoon, the government announced that Dr. Gordon (Burma Surgeon) Seagrave will be allowed to practice medicine again at the Namkham mission hospital which he founded. Said the doctor: "I am grateful to the government and people of Burma for their trust. Every life I save will be dedicated to U Kyaw Myint, the Burmese lawyer who defended me against treason charges."

Old Soldier-Diplomat Patrick J. Hurley, who recently made Oklahoma's Hall of Fame, landed in still another niche: the Denver Post's Hall of Fame, for his "outstanding leadership and success" as chairman of the Rocky Mountain Scrap Mobilization Committee.

Representatives of 75 professional, scientific and learned societies across the land cited Herbert Hoover as "the most illustrious member" of the engineering profession.

Taking along several thousand Talking Letter recording tapes, Cardinal Spellman left Manhattan to spend Christmas with the troops in Korea. Invited to make the holiday visit to the war zone by General James A. Van Fleet, the cardinal planned to arrive in time to say Christmas Mass "any place, even if it is in a cave. I'll be happier in Korea than any place else, even St. Patrick's Cathedral."

In Tokyo, Crown Prince Akihito celebrated another birthday and said to reporters with 18-year-old solemnity: "I want to be a man with a strong moral backbone and a keen and reliable insight and knowledge."

Fever Chart

Animal Trainer Clyde Beatty, already carrying a total of 24 scars on his back from brushes with wild beasts, picked up one on his right arm. While Beatty was rehearsing with a panther for some television adventure films, the big cat squirmed loose and clawed him.

A case of laryngitis left Singer Frankie Laine completely silenced. Doctors hoped that treatment and a quiet rest at his Encino, Calif, home would save him from an operation to remove the scablike nodes which have appeared on his vocal cords.

In Hollywood, British Ballerina Moira (The Red Shoes') Shearer told her studio bosses that she was expecting a baby in the summer, would therefore have to step out of her role in the new film Hans Christian Andersen.

In Chicago, Actor Edward G. Robinson borrowed a diathermy machine to warm up his aching bones; playing the part of Rubashov in Darkness at Noon on a drafty stage had aggravated a case of bursitis in his right shoulder.

After a bout with pneumonia, Old Football Hero "Red" Grange, 48, now a Chicago insurance executive and television commentator, was ordered to spend four more weeks in the hospital.

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