Prejudices & Propositions

After listening attentively to the songs from Broadway's Kiss Me, Kate, the Australian Broadcasting Commission decided that some of the Cole Porter lyrics were not fit for Aussie ears, banned the playing of I Hate Men, Too Darn Hot, Always True to You in My Fashion, and Brush Up Your Shakespeare.

Uncle Tom made news behind the Iron Curtain. A new edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin, the classic anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, went on sale in Budapest as the newspaper Magyar Nemzet assured its readers that "in Truman's America they try to hide this book."*

A federal grand jury in Chicago indicted Ralph ("Bottles") Capone, crime syndicate boss and brother of the late, notorious Al, on a charge of income-tax evasion. He had failed to list all his assets when he offered $25,000 to settle a tax bill of $92,667 for 1922-28.

Rock-jawed Cinemactor John (Stagecoach) Wayne, 44, recently named for the second time by movie exhibitors as Hollywood's No. 1 box-office draw, announced "with regrets" on his sixth wedding anniversary that he and his Mexican-born wife, Esperanza Baur, had separated, but hoped to patch it up eventually.

Still in good voice, Lady Astor, who used to swap bitter words in the House of Commons with Winston Churchill, told a Manchester luncheon club that she'd had a change of heart: "We've never exactly been buddies. I never thought the time would come when I would say,

'Thank God for Winston Churchill.' But I do now. We need a man of courage and vision. We are in the worst jam we have ever been in, and unless every man, woman and child wakes up, we will go completely down the drain."

Great Expectations

After weeks of tabloid ballyhoo, curious patrons, including her Texas playboy husband Sheppard King, packed into a Miami Beach nightclub for the American premiere of Samia Gamal's torso-twisting harem dance. In bare feet, a gossamer pink skirt slit down the middle, gold tassels glittering round her bare midriff, Samia slithered through four minutes of her "real oriental art." Then she hurried to her dressing room for a Band-Aid for her big toe, which she had cut on the glass floor. Critical consensus: domestic burlesque is good, too.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who gave up their 30-room Antibes estate two years ago, had French real estate agents scouting for another country home. Their requirements this time: something small, near a golf course, with three or four bedrooms and enough space for twelve servants.

Dressed in the grey habit of the Sisterhood of Martha and Mary, a charitable order she helped found in Athens several years ago, Princess Alice of Greece, mother of the Duke of Edinburgh and granddaughter of Queen Victoria, arrived in Manhattan for her third cross-country fund-raising tour. The $10,000 raised two years ago, she said, was used to buy a home for the order, which cares for the poor and the sick. "I am very hopeful this time that I can get enough money to enlarge our plant so that I will not have to come back again asking for money."

In Los Angeles, Old Heavyweight Jack Dempsey, 57, announced that he was sponsoring an International Novice Tournament to find a new heavyweight hope. To uncover amateurs at least 18 years old and weighing more than 175 Ibs., Dempsey said he would flood the nation's boys' clubs and gyms with posters headed "An opportunity for fame and fortune for the heavyweight youths of the world," and arguing that a fight career is not as bad as reformers paint it.

Late Blooming Posies

The Marchesa Maria Cristina Marconi,

widow of the man who made radio practical, and daughter Elettra arrived in Pittsburgh to unveil a bronze bust of her husband commemorating the soth anniversary of his first wireless message sent from Cornwall, England to Newfoundland.

In Washington, Secretary of the Army Frank Pace handed out the first four brand-new Armed Forces Reserve Medals authorized last fall for members of the Reserve and National Guard who have spent ten years in "honorable and satisfactory service." Among the winners: Major General Julius Ochs Adler, vice president and general manager of the New York Times, a member of the Reserve for 35 years and now commander of the 77th Infantry Division, a Reserve outfit.

At a solemn West Point ceremony on the 100th anniversary of his appointment as eighth superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy, General Robert E. Lee was "welcomed back." His portrait, the first in the academy to show a man in Confederate uniform, was hung next to that of General Ulysses S. Grant.

* First published in 1851 as a magazine serial, Uncle Tom's Cabin has been translated into at least 23 languages, is still carried on the current lists of four U.S. publishing houses.

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