Paris was unwrapping its Spring fashions, and last year's dictator of decollete, Dior's Marc Bohan, 37, was still in there plunging. Necklines were slipping in practically every big fashion house, but Bohan was a hard man to undercut, clearly wound up on the bottom of the heap. His biggest surprise was moving the bared bosom into broad daylight, and one billowy-sleeved, pleated-skirt afternoon number called the "Tom Jones" was so generously scooped that a single false step--and zut! alors! "We think women are glad to have such decolletage," said a Dior spokesman. But as soon as the show was over, the suddenly-modest models buttoned up quick as a blink before rushing out to bestow the usual congratulatory kisses on their mentor.

When he could, John Foster Dulles loved to get away from it all on two private islands he owned on the Canadian side of Lake Ontario. Now a longtime Dulles friend, Chaumont, N.Y., Marina Operator Robert Hart, who had a cottage on the main island, has bought the hideaway for an undisclosed sum, promises to "keep it as it is." That's not quite what will happen to Franklin D. Roosevelt's old 165-ft. yacht Potomac. Up for auction, the vessel which the wartime President called his "Shangri-La," went for $55,000 to none other than Elvis Presley. Did that mean the Potomac would soon be rock 'n' rolling to guitars as well as waves? No, said Elvis. It goes to the F.D.R.-founded March of Dimes to be used as the foundation sees fit.

To sing a song worth sixpence in the opera world of the 1930s, an American girl like Rise Stevens had to go to Europe for training, and she has always regarded that as a crying shame. Now the mezzo-soprano, 50, will have a chance to do something about it. She and Metropolitan Opera Executive Stage Manager Michael Manuel have been named general managers of the Met's new National Company, which will start touring the country full time in the fall of 1965. "We have a tremendous wealth of talent in this country, and for the first time they will be able to train and perform under top directors," trilled Rise. "I've had my own wonderful career. Now I want to see some other singers come along and become stars."

Spain is one of the few places left in the world where celebrities can draw a breath in peace. But there is at least one newshawk among the chickens. Shadowing Holland's visiting Princess Irene, 24, a Madrid photographer followed her to a Roman Catholic church, where he watched her receiving Communion--and stumbled on the best-kept secret of the Dutch House of Orange. Sometime last year "after long and deep thinking," Irene, second in line to the throne, had converted to Catholicism. Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard, said a hastily prepared royal communique, "fully backed the freedom of choice by their children," and her right to the throne was not affected. But the first break with Dutch royalty's traditional Protestantism drew volleys in the religiously split country.

He never was very robust, and now, at 64, he is growing noticeably pale and frail. But tiny (5 ft. 3 in.) Showman Billy Rose is still the oldtime dynamite. Traveling to Jerusalem for the seventh time in three years, he was overseeing construction of his greatest philanthropical production: a $500,000 garden to display his $1,000,000 collection of statuary as part of Israel's Bezalel National Museum. "The Guggenheim is nothing compared to what my museum is going to be," boasted Billy. And why was he giving away his collection? "After I'm gone I don't want all this stuff bought at auction by some thin-lipped banker for his home in Peekskill. Not that I don't like bankers. I do. I just don't like Peekskill."

With only two days remaining before the close of nominations, eight members of the Swedish Parliament recommended Martin Luther King Jr., 35, for the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. The Southern leader of the U.S. Negro's drive for integration should be considered, said the legislators, because he "had succeeded in keeping his followers to the principle of nonviolence. Without King's confirmed conviction of the justification and effectiveness of this principle, demonstrations and marches could easily have become violent and ended with the spilling of blood."

Shortly after dawn, the party of twelve doughty adventurers donned life jackets, split into pairs and shoved off from shore on half a dozen rubber rafts. Mission: to shoot the rapids of the swirling Rio Grande as it passes through 1,900-ft.-deep Mariscal Canyon in Texas' Big Bend National Park. A jagged rock gashed one raft, temporarily putting it out of commission, but Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, 65, and his bride of six months negotiated the hair-raising 14 miles of pounding waves, treacherous turns and large rocks without a spill. First-Timer Joan Douglas, 23, dug it the most. "It was the thrill of a lifetime," she bubbled. "It's for me. I want to do some more.

You can't imagine." Her husband had done it all before. "Wonderful ride," said the cool old river man.

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