Trials & Tribulations

In Saigon, after a reporting tour of Indo-China, British Novelist Graham (The End of the Affair) Greene applied for a U.S. visa, ran smack into the clause of the McCarran exclusion act which automatically forbids U.S. entry to any alien who was ever a member of a totalitarian party. Greene's difficulty: during his Oxford days in the early '20s, he joined the Communist Party "as a prank," paid dues for a month before he dropped out, later to become a soul-searching Roman Catholic. In Washington, the State Department turned the Greene case over to the Justice Department, which has authority to allow exceptions in unusual cases.

London's Fleet Street produced its own spot of news: Lord Rothermere, 53, publisher of the Daily Mail, the Evening News and the Sunday Dispatch, filed a divorce petition against Lady Rothermere, 38, who did not contest. The corespondent: Ian Fleming, 42, foreign manager of the Kemsley newspapers.

London's Sunday Express reported that King George VI had a new outdoor item in his wardrobe: an electrically heated waistcoat, made of khaki silk, ribbed with wires which feed from a pocket battery.

In Athens, at a charity benefit showing of the movie Tales of Hoffmann, King Paul, accompanied by Queen Frederika, hobbled to his seat on crutches. Nursing a sprained knee, which he had twisted recently on his yacht, the King insisted on keeping the theater date.

In Hollywood, Errol Flynn buckled when he should have swashed, tripped on the deck of a studio pirate ship, broke his ankle.

Low Bows

At a little sunshine ceremony in Tallahassee, Governor Fuller Warren presented the Duke of Windsor with a certificate proclaiming him an honorary citizen of the state of Florida. There was no title for the Duchess. She is an American, the governor explained, and already "one of us."

In their annual floral tribute, all members of the House of Representatives and page boys came to work with red carnations (paid for by Ohio Republicans) in honor of the 109th birthday of William McKinley. Next day, everyone wore white carnations (paid for by the Democratic National Congressional Committee) on the 70th birthday of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Representatives of the United Nations, including Israel and Sweden, gathered on a barren hill between Jerusalem and the sea, to plant the first tree of what is to be a pine forest dedicated to the memory of Sweden's Count Folke Bernadotte, U.N. mediator who was assassinated in 1948.

In Jodhpur State, India, barbers called time out for a rest after 300,000 residents queued up to have their heads shaved as a mark of mourning for the late Maharaja of Jodhpur, who was killed a fortnight ago in a plane crash.

In London, her parents announced that Lieut. Hoyt S. Vandenberg Jr., 23, son of the Air Force chief of staff, had won the hand of Sue Rosannah Johnson, 19, daughter of Major General Leon Johnson, Medal of Honor man (the Ploesti raid) and boss of the Third U.S. Air Force in Britain. They will be married at Mitchel Field, Long Island, after her father takes over his new job as commander of the Continental Air Command.

Women at Work

After Trunk Murderess Winnie Ruth Judd made her fourth escape from the Arizona State Hospital in Phoenix last December and was picked up within 24 hours, bets were laid that she would do it again within three months. Last week the bets were collected after police issued a terse bulletin: "Winnie Ruth Judd is missing . . ."

In Rome, Ingrid Bergman announced that she and her director-husband Roberto Rossellini expect their second child in June. Said Rossellini: "We both hope our marriage will now be taken 'for the sacred, serious thing it is."

The day after her divorce from young Conrad ("Nicky") Hilton became a legal fact, Cinemactress Elizabeth Taylor, 19, announced that she would marry British Cinemactor Michael Wilding, 39, who is waiting for his own divorce to be final. Said she: "We are definitely engaged. We have no definite plans as to exactly when we'll be married."

Two and a half months after Metropolitan Soprano Patrice Munsel, 26, stoutly denied a tabloid report that she was romancing with candy heir and television director Robert Schuler (TIME, Nov. 26), her parents announced their engagement and summer wedding plans.

In her flower-decked hotel bedroom in Nice, Colette, aging French novelist and short story writer (Gigi, La Maison de Claudine), sipped champagne, read some Maupassant and made a 79th birthday decision: "It isn't particularly funny to learn all at once upon waking up that one is entering one's 80s. But tomorrow I will forget and give myself another age, 58 for instance, because I have remained so much a woman. At 58 one still pleases ... at 58 one has so much hope."

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