Friday, Jan. 06, 1961
At the close of his brash, autobiographical Presidents Who Have Known Me (1950), Washington Lawyer and Laughing Boy George E. Allen, now 64, long a ringleader of fun and games for White House occupants, sniggered: "Fear not, I tell myself; the men who emerge as our leaders will have the incalculable advantage of knowing me." Allen may find it rough going in enticing John F. Kennedy into the recreations that he enjoyed with Gettysburg Neighbor Dwight Eisenhower (farming, bridge and golf), Harry Truman (poker) or Franklin D. Roosevelt (for whom Allen was a top jester as well as a District of Columbia commissioner). Last week Golfer Kennedy, never keen on card games, made it clear that there will be no afternoon trips to Burning Tree: he will abstain from golfing unless he is on a declared vacation. The one hope left for Allen seemed to be touch football, which ranks with sailing and swimming among Kennedy's favorite sports. And not long ago a visitor to Allen's office spotted on a handy shelf a book called Touch Football.--A Los Angeles jury mulled it over for an hour and a half, decided that' toupee-topped Dennis Crosby, 26, one of the Old Groaner's four singing sons, fathered the illegitimate three-year-old daughter of Hollywood Divorcee Marilyn Scott.
Dennis is also the father of a 22-month old son by his ex-showgirl wife Pat, whom he married in 1958 and who is expecting another child imminently. The key defense witness, with whose expert testimony the jurors apparently disagreed, was a toxicologist who testified that if Dennis had actually downed 16 to 20 mixed vodka drinks before getting together with Marilyn, he could not possibly have become anybody's father.
Standing straight as an old Napoleonic musket. France's iron-eyed Navy Captain Philippe Henri Xavier Antoine de Gaulle, 39, only son of France's iron-willed President, took over command of the convoy ship Le Picard in a ceremony at the
Mediterranean naval base of Toulon. A towering look-alike of the Charles de Gaulle of yore, Philippe has shown many flashes of his father's courage as well, holds a Croix de guerre with palm for his World War II exploits.
Back from Laos to a Manhattan hos pital came Jungle Physician Thomas Dooley, 33, with an apparent recurrence in his spine of the cancer that had originally attacked him in the chest in 1959.
In Hong Kong, where his new symptoms felled him last month, Tom Dooley, looking haunted-eyed and haggard, said: "I know that my kind of cancer as yet has no cure." Marie Dionne Houle, 26, became the third of the Dionne quintuplets to achieve motherhood. But like Annette and Cecile.
Marie gave birth to only one child -- a daughter, by Montreal Court Clerk Florian Houle. Marie named her baby after Emilie, the only one of the quints who is no longer alive (she died in 1955).
Customarily in her gadding about, Britain's Princess Margaret has flown on Royal Air Force planes. But for a brief visit with her mother-in-law, the Countess of Rosse in Ireland, Margaret and Hus band Antony Armstrong-Jones booked to go on an Irish commercial airliner, tourist class. Possible reason for their plebeian style: if they came winging in over Irish ground in a British military aircraft, it might stir up the wrong kind of feelings.
"As a Virginian myself, whose mother came from a long line of Virginians and whose mother and father were married in the present City of Norfolk, I accept as a great honor the invitation of the city to place my papers, decorations and other mementos of my military service in its perpetual care and keeping." Thus last week did General of the Army Douglas MacArthur notify the birthplace of his mother that he was consigning his vast memorabilia to its custody; he also requested that he and his wife be buried in Norfolk. The city has big plans for MacArthur. It will renovate its 111-year-old courthouse (gradually to be vacated in favor of a new civic center) at a cost of almost $500,000 as a MacArthur me morial, rename the immediate surroundings MacArthur Square. Into the building will go some 150 chests of MacArthur's personal and military documents, his 123 U.S. and foreign decorations, battle trophies and gifts from the great, and the 126 battle flags that have unfurled over his soldier's career. On the collection's lighter side: the general's special gold-braided cap, his old sunglasses and his favorite corncob pipe.
* As an undergraduate at Tennessee's Cumberland University in 1916, Allen got up a tackle football team on short notice and accepted a challenge from Georgia Tech. Manager-Captain Allen, playing fullback when not coaching from the bench, masterfully guided Cumberland to a 222 to 0 defeat.
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