Slings & Arrows

At a Beverly Hills theater, while watching a showing of Red Badge of Courage, Cinemactor James Mason took part in an unscheduled, action-packed short subject. His later version of what happened: "This guy a few rows ahead of me was talking so loud I couldn't hear the dialogue. This went on for about 15 minutes. Finally I couldn't stand it any more. I got out of my seat and walked down to where he was sitting and said: 'Damn it, shut up, will you? I can't hear the movie.' Then I slapped him." Peering closely, Mason suddenly recognized his man as Playwright-Lyricist William (Hello, Out There) Saroyan. "So I said: 'Oh, hello, Bill. Shut up, will you?' Then I went back to my seat."

In Washington for a guest appearance with the National Symphony, Britain's terrible-tempered Conductor Sir Thomas Beecham was introduced to Post Music Critic Paul Hume, who a year ago got threats from the White House for being unimpressed by Singer Margaret Truman's voice. "Why, sir!" roared the British visitor. "I want to shake your hand. I consider you one of the national heroes." Then Sir Thomas had an afterthought: "My God, now the President will never come to my concert!"

After a Chicago revival of Shaw's Candida, the Daily News's Columnist Sydney J. Harris heaped eight paragraphs of praise on the play itself, on G.B.S., on Candida as his favorite Shaw heroine, on most of the players, and added kind words for the staging and the set. His review ended with a one-sentence stinger: "The title role is taken by Miss Olivia de Havilland, a motion picture actress." Tribune Critic Claudia Cassidy found Olivia "an interruption, nothing more." The verdict of the actress' 27-month-old son, Benjamin, made it unanimous: "The curtain goes up and my mommy comes out and talks and talks and talks."

Change of Pace

At Waikiki Beach, pretty Nina ("Honey Bear") Warren, visiting Hawaii with her father, California's Governor Earl Warren, cavorted in the surf on well-turned legs that are still regaining strength after her successful fight against a polio attack a year ago.

Oldtime Airman Bert Acosta, 57, headliner of the '20s, turned up in a Manhattan restaurant, down on his luck and ill with tuberculosis. Whisked off to a hospital, he got a get-well letter from Rear Admiral (ret.) Richard E. Byrd, who flew across the Atlantic after Charles A. Lindbergh in 1927, with Bernt Balchen (now an Air Force colonel) and Acosta as copilots.

Do brains handicap a girl? Said Cinemactress Vanessa Brown, 23, a onetime radio Quiz Kid: "Not if she keeps them well hidden--behind a low neckline."

On her way to an engagement at a Miami nightclub, Egyptian Cooch Dancer Samia Gamal, bride of Texas Playboy (Shepherd) Abdullah King, sniffed the U.S. air, announced that American women "use too much soap. I take a bath twice every week, and the other days I sponge myself with olive oil. It would be better if American girls shined a little."

Men of Distinction

In Pakistan, the Ismaili Moslem sect decided to give their spiritual leader, the Ago Khan, his weight in platinum on his 75th birthday next week. Platinic worth of his approximate 240 Ibs.: $300,000-$1,900,000 less than the 243 1/2 Ibs. in diamonds he got in 1946.

Nuclear Physicist Enrico Perm!, 1938 Nobel Prize winner, who started the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, dropped in at the University of Rochester, picked up a Doctor of Science degree, his eighth honorary diploma.

The U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce announced its "ten outstanding young men of 1951." On the list: Helicopter Designer Stanley Miller Jr., 27; Gordon B. McLendon, 30, president of the mushrooming (443 stations) Liberty Broadcasting System; Air Force Colonel Francis S. Gabreski, 32, Korean air ace, who last week bagged his fourth MIG; Publisher John H. Johnson, 33, who nine years ago, on a $500 shoestring, started the nation's No. 1 string of Negro magazines (Ebony, Jet, etc.); Donald R. Wilson, 34, national commander of the American Legion.

Cardinal Spellman was greeted in Formosa by Generalissimo and Mme. Chiang Kaishek, reported that 300 Catholic Chinese prisoners of war in Korea had begged him to try to get them to Formosa to join the Nationalist troops.

After a 17-mile race through a mounting North Carolina blizzard, Mississippi's Democratic Representative John E. Rankin was arrested by a highway patrolman, charged with careless and reckless driving. Ol' John's futile defense: congressional immunity to arrest except for "treason, felony, or a breach of the peace."

Conductor Leopold Stokowski, 69, postponed a Minneapolis concert, took up a vigil at the Manhattan bedside of wife Gloria Vanderbilt Stokowski, 27, to await the arrival of their second child.

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