Friday, Mar. 27, 1964

He had been "a good, innocent and quite timid boy." And from the age of 14, in 1896, until a year before his death in 1963, Angelo Giuseppe Ron-call i kept a record of his thoughts and dreams on odd pieces of paper. Lovingly edited by his long-time personal secretary, Msgr. Loris Capovilla, Pope John XXIII's diary, titled The Journal of a Soul, was published in Rome. At 15, the Pope-to-be was already praying "more than anything else, for union with the separated churches"; at 21, as a seminarian, he mused: "Even if I were to become Pope, when I shall appear before the Divine Judge, then what am I?" But mostly, John's Journal is a touching composite of a humble, gentle man never satisfied, ever seeking. Despite the book's hefty $8 price tag, it is ringing up brisk sales.

. . .

Her late husband designed and built the first one in 1911, and that gave the Vintage Chevrolet Club of America a bright, if belated, idea. They would bestow honorary membership on Suzanne Chevrolet, 75. Off chugged the members to her home near Detroit, with a vintage 1915 Chevy in tow. The automaker's widow graciously climbed behind the wheel, chatted about Swiss-born Louis Chevrolet. And which model does she drive today? "A Mercury," she replied. "They gave me a better deal."

Mostly, she lies around sopping up sun in a bracelet or maybe some sunglasses. And occasionally she even slips into a minuscule peekini swim suit. It's just that buff looks best on Brigitte Bardot, 29. But when a cameraman dropped in by invitation at her rented beach house near Rio, Brigitte pulled on a striped T shirt, tight and faded blue jeans and above-the-knee boots, just the getup for a tropical beach scene. And the result was practically chichi. Her two-month seclusion with Playboy-friend Bob Zagury seems to have agreed with her. She's put on a little weight, is golden brown, and looks relaxed and natural even when not au naturel. "I'm much better this way," coos BB. Si, si, agree 77 million Brazilians.

. . .

"Women should be obscene and not heard." That's the sort of word play that Beatle John Lennon, 23, dotes on, and since he writes it down, Simon and Schuster decided to publish it. Come April 20, In His Own Write will go on sale for $2.50. Excerpted in last week's Satevepost, Lennon's "graphospasms" were even hairier than the songs he helps write. "Little did he nose," writes Lennon "that the next day a true story would actually happen." He peoples his retelling of Treasure Island with Large John Saliver, Small Jack Hawkins, Blind Jew, Cpt. Smellit and Sten Gunn. "As far as I'm conceived," he says on the book jacket, "this correction of short writty is the most wonderfoul larf I've ever ready." A larf all the whee to Barclays', no dute.

. . .

The spout was on. "Don't call me Cassius Clay. I am Muhammad Ali, the heavyweight champion of the whole world." But for once, whatever-his-name-is conceded his limitations. "The Army's the boss," he said sagely after hearing that careful double-checking had confirmed he was not intelligent enough to be drafted. Still, now that there was no prospect of his becoming Private Ali, canny Cassius must have been secretly crowing: "I am the dumbest! Heh, heh!"

. . . At long last, Elizabeth Rosamond Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher took on the Burton. After 24 months as the world's most famous lovers, the seemingly (or unseemlily) inseparable couple made it legal in Montreal at a Unitarian ceremony attended only by eleven of their dearest employees. It was a hush-hush, rush-rush affair, for which they secretly flew up from Toronto--where Dick is doing Hamlet--in a chartered Viscount. By 2:20 that afternoon, here came the bride, all dressed in yellow chiffon, topped by a nuptial hairdo that featured a 34-in., hyacinth-entwined coil of hair. Then, slipping a circlet of diamonds on Liz's finger, he she wed. That night, said Liz, "we sat and talked and giggled and cried until 7 in the morning."

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Producer Marty Ransohoff, 35, likes B.O. plenty. His Beverly Hillbillies is a smash. But Marty's first two films, Boys' Night Out and The Wheeler Dealers, didn't snag quite as much customer coin as he had hoped. So in The Americanization of Emily he decided to trot in three nudes, tagged Broads 1, 2 and 3 in the script. And when the Motion Picture Association Production Code Administration refused to take the broad view and ordered some snipping Marty sounded arty, almost. "The code," he huffed to a reporter, "should be more mature and reflect modern morality and the market conditions of the picture business." Eh? "The market conditions of the picture business." Oh.

. . .

Midst laurels stood: Bob Hope, 60, appointed to the ten-member board that selects winners of the presidential Medal of Freedom, filling a vacancy left by Henry Cabot Lodge; Rodman Rockefeller, 31, Nelson's oldest son, given the Chilean Order of Merit (Dad got it in 1945) for being "the kind of private businessman whose contributions, energy and ideals are so badly needed for the right development of Latin America"; Columbia University's No-bel-Prizewinning Physicist Dr. Isidor Rabi, 65, named winner of the annual $1,000 Joseph Priestley Memorial Award for "services to mankind through physics."

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