Take It or Leave It

Between shows in the capital, Musi-comedienne Carol (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) Channing disclosed that her giddy role had not kept her from observing a phenomenon across the local footlights. Her dictum: "Washington audiences come to the theater as researchers. They watch me like hawks and . . . treat me with the deference they would accord to a symphony, but it's impersonal . . . If Americans are ready to accept big people with close-cropped hair and large eyes like me, Washington wants to know about it. I have a feeling I'm being examined and absorbed and filed away, because you never know when I might come in handy, if I'm really the new American taste."

In Dallas, where such Hollywood rooters as Producer David O. Selznick and Cinemactor Ronald Reagan tried to cheer up some 1,000 low-grossing movie exhibitors at a morale meeting, Evangelist Billy Graham popped in with an idea for curing the industry's ailments. Cried Graham: "Take sex and crime out of the movies. We've had so much sex in this country till we're sick to death of it. That's why people stay away. Decent people are ashamed . . ."

After being lionized as the old darling of the Cannes film festival, veteran (68) Slapstick Producer Mack Sennett returned to Hollywood with a bit of advice for Americans going to France: "Don't be surprised by anything." To show what he meant, Sennett recalled a Maurice Chevalier show in Paris where the chorus girls bounced around naked from the waist up. Said Sennett primly: "I had to clean my glasses three times to make sure."

In London, at a Mothers' Union session presided over by his wife, the Archbishop of Canterbury, father of six sons, thumped for bigger British families. Said he: "A family only truly begins with three children. Thereafter . . . majority rule becomes at once possible. After all, that is the beginning of democracy . . ."

Old Wine, New Bottles

On her stepfather's small farm near Lowell, Ind., Barbara Paul Sears ("Bobo") Rockefeller, 35, the miner's "Cinderella" daughter who married Winthrop Rockefeller in 1948 and separated from him 2 1/2 years ago, cried out against the false glitter of gold. Of the $1,000,000 trust fund set up by her husband last February for their three-year-old son, Winthrop Jr., Bobo said contemptuously: "It doesn't mean a thing. It's inadequate if he's to be raised to the station in life that a Rockefeller should be . . . A Rockefeller wasn't born to be raised on a farm." She said she will not tell little Winnie that he is a millionaire: "He grabs at everything in sight at the toy store, [but] I tell him: 'We can't afford it, dear.'" Bobo described herself as broke, an installment-plan buyer, knee-deep in cooking and other menial household chores. When told that her husband's lawyers had said that Winthrop had given her a tax-free $128,000 since their separation, Bobo was "absolutely flabbergasted." Said she: "Untrue . . . absolutely disgusting." But all Bobo really wants, she indicated, is a reconciliation: "I love Winthrop. I always have. After all, he is the father of my first child. There's an old saying that a woman never forgets the father of her firstborn. I'll never forget him . . ."

After a year in the U.S. Army, including nine months of German occupation duty, Pfc. Vito Farinola, 24, better known in his civilian days as Crooner Vic Damone, was home again to tackle an assignment right down his alley. Following official orders, Vic dropped into a Manhattan recording studio, cut a platter called The Girls Are Marching, a rousing new number which the Defense Department hopes will help recruit 80,00 women.

In Rome, Maestro Arturo Toscaninl, 85, bothered by a year-old knee injury, put his ailing leg in the hands of Hypnotist Achille ("The Sorcerer of Naples") D'Angelo, widely known in Italy for cures attributed to his mesmeric touch.

Down Memory Lane

Riled by G.O.P. Presidential Candidate Dwight Eisenhower's statement that "beyond pure Socialism lies pure dictatorship," old (67) Socialist Norman Thomas, himself a six-time presidential election loser, shot off a bristling letter to Ike. Main point: "Do you think you will get [the aid of Socialist Britain and Scandinavia] in the defense of Western Europe or of the world by the kind of blanket affirmation that you made . . .?"

In France, a U.S. sailor, lunching with a shipmate at Juan-les-Pins' chic Municipal Casino, bet his buddy a dollar that the slim woman under the huge hat at a nearby table was Greta Garbo. The headwaiter relayed Greta's denial: "Sorry, the name is Brooks."

Tossed out on a Greenwich Village sidewalk with his belongings and young wife for being two months behind on his $42.50-a-month rent, Maxwell Bodenheim, 61, eccentric poet-novelist of the '20s (Replenishing Jessica, Naked on Roller Skates), was in need of a friend. New York City's Welfare Department, said Max, had let him down by assuring him that the rent would be paid.

All in a Day's Work

In honor of his 31st birthday, the Duke of Edinburgh got his first royal salute: 41 guns in Hyde Park at noon, topped by 62 salvos an hour later.

In Havana, where he is riding high with the Batista government and trying his hand as an all-round entrepreneur (cellulose fiber, drugs, a drive-in theater), Elliott Roosevelt admitted that he had asked for permission to put one more iron in the fire. Elliott's $1,600,000 proposal: erection of four disposal plants to convert Havana's garbage into fertilizer.

In Liege for the first time since he ascended Belgium's throne, young (21) King Baudouin was welcomed by thousands of his cheering subjects. But when two little girls asked him for his autograph, His Majesty stiffened. "I can't," said he firmly. "I must not create a precedent."

Denmark's robust, tattooed King Frederik IX yielded to an impulse. Upon his return to the palace after one of his regular swims at Copenhagen's State High School for Physical Education, His Majesty calmly announced to his family: "For a long time I have had the most ardent desire to push the bath attendant into the pool. Today I did push him in."

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