Back in 1955, a handout-hopeful Briton wrote the wife of Massachusetts' junior U.S. Senator complaining about the amounts that the Kennedys spent "frivolously." "Your letter has made me most unhappy," replied Jacqueline Kennedy. "How wonderful it would be if this were a world where -L-7,000 or $20,000 were merely to me the sum spent on an evening party, as you put it--if that were true, I would give what I could to enable you to start a new life." Last year, still anxious for some profit, Ronald Munro sold the handwritten, four-page letter to a professional dealer. When it is sold in New York City this week, it is expected to bring at least $1,000, more than any letter from a living woman has ever previously fetched at auction.

Calories Don't Count blared the title, and delighted fatties swallowed every word of Dr. Herman Toller's book. They also gobbled tons of safflower-oil capsules as prescribed by Taller. It was bad enough when the Food & Drug Administration retorted that calories do indeed count and that safflower oil is worthless. But Taller's own fat was really in the fire when it came out that he apparently had a financial interest in a safflower-pill manufacturer endorsed in the book. That, said a Federal indictment filed last week, amounts to mail fraud, conspiracy and violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act. If convicted, pudgy Taller faces a maximum of 239 years of good starchy prison fare.

Sometimes a ZIP code is superfluous. Addresses like "A Grand Old Soldier" and "The Great Man" are quite enough when the letters are among the 20,000 get-well notes that have been sent to Douglas MacArthur, now mending in Walter Reed Army Hospital.

Of course, they insured Olivia de Hav-illand's jaw and Durante's nose, but what Lloyd's of London likes to cover best is a pair of legs. First they took on Grable's gams, then insured Marlene Dietrich from toe to thigh. Now Angle Dickinson, 32, Captain Newman M.D.'s favorite nurse, has got a policy on her props. Her studio thinks they're worth $1,000,000, or about $15,000 per well-turned inch. Nice round figure.

The '64 Caddie was barreling along at 76 m.p.h. That was exactly 46 too many, and Denver's Champion Ticket Writer James ("Buster") Snider set out to add another notch to his pad. Some notch. The driver turned out to be Defeated Champion Sonny Listen, who just hours before had been happily modeling hats with his wife. Sadly, Sonny did not have a valid Colorado driver's license.

What he did have was a concealed .22cal. automatic pistol, also unlicensed. Sonny, his arm no longer in a sling, was booked on the concealed-weapon and no-license charges, plus careless, reckless and speedy driving. As an ex-con, he also faces a possible felony rap for carrying a weapon, concealed or not. He shoulda never left that stool.

Love equals zero in tennis, and love all seems to be the score in the 16-year marriage of 1947 Wimbledon Champion Margaret Osborne, 43, and Sports Buff William du Pont Jr., 68. Margaret is now in Reno, and to quiet any blue-blooded buzz, the chemicals millionheir decided to issue a statement "for her protection as well as my own. Neither of us is interested in a third party. We are devoted to our twelve-year-old son Billy and will jointly plan his future." All of that, of course, meant they will "amicably part company by a divorce." Game, set, and mismatch.

All that her husband left was a mountain estate, 40 miles northeast of Florence. Now, almost 19 years after his death, Benito's widow, Donna Rachele Mussolini, 73, has opened a new restaurant on the grounds. Called Le Cami-nate (dialect for "the promenades"), it specializes in game dishes, notably pheasant, guinea hen, pigeon, and a breast-of-chicken concoction well-named for her daughter-in-law Maria's sister, Sophia Loren. Simple, white-haired Mama Rachele runs the kitchen herself, uses home-grown vegetables, fruit and fowl. Customers say the food is squisito, well worth the trip. Fortunately, // Duce built a good road all the way to his front gate.

Seven's a pretty special number, and a pretty special number is just what six-times-divorced Barbara Mutton found for her next match. European royalty is old crown these days, so Babs, 51, went East and found a prince tucked away, in Laos, of all places. It looks as if she'll marry him this week, probably in Mexico. Her find is Doan Vinh, who also answers to the name of Raymond. A sometime painter who mysteriously hails somehow from Viet Nam, he is the adopted son of Royalist Prince Boun Oum's uncle, and should be just the man to parry cocktail-circuit gambits such as "Can we save Southeast Asia?" With Hutton's millions in on the action, of course we can.

Father phoned the news to Prince Charles, 15, but he will likely have to wait until hols to see the new prince (see MILESTONES). Gordonstoun school carefully treats Charles like any other student--but the other students don't.

"How can you treat a boy as just an ordinary chap when his mother's portrait is on the coins you spend, the stamps you use?" asks a former schoolmate. In the April Redbook, Patrick Pelham-Jones paints a stark picture of the future king. Since commoner types "don't chum up with him lest they be accused of 'sucking up,' " Charles's only real friends are two other princes at the school. "Charlie-boy," as he is occasionally called behind his back, often walks to classes alone.

What can you say after you've said it all? You say it all over again. But the Feds who are looking after Informer

Joseph Valachi, 60, don't care if it does become a bore. In the District of Columbia jail where he is resting his weary bones and wagging tongue, Joe has been asked to whip up an autobiography in hopes that he will drop a few pearls about swine he forgot before. But Joe is taking the whole thing as a serious publishing venture, says a CBS newsman who got hold of the first paragraph of The Real Thing. "To begin with," writes Joe, "I must say I came from the poorest family on earth. As a boy I went barefoot most of the time and never did 1 receive anything at Christmas. I believed in Santa Claus and hung my stocking up, but never found an apple." When he did, of course, it was rotten.

Midst laurels stood: Poetess Phyllis McGinley, 58, awarded Notre Dame's annual Laetare Medal, the most prestigious honor conferred on a Roman

Catholic layman in the U.S., "worn only by men and women whose genius has ennobled the arts and sciences, illustrated the ideals of the Church and enriched the heritage of humanity"; Author John Updike, 32, Critic Aileen Ward, 40, and Poet John Crowe Ransom, 75, each presented with a $1,000 National Book Award for last year's The Centaur, John Keats: The Making of a Poet and Selected Poems, respectively; Arizona Democrat Carl Hayden, 86, now the Senator with the longest record of service in the entire history of the Senate, having passed the longevity total of the late Wyoming Republican Francis Warren; and U.S. Ambassador Fulton Freeman, 48, given the Cruz de Boyaca--Colombia's highest award, previously reserved only for heads of state and never before bestowed on a North American--by President Guillermo Valencia, who said of Freeman, soon to move to Mexico: "The most extraordinary ambassador Colombia has ever had."

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