Harry Truman, 80, fractured two ribs and cut his forehead when he slipped in the bathtub of his Independence, Mo., home. He was rushed to Research Hospital in Kansas City, where he received a dozen red carnations from Visiting Speechmaker Barry Goldwater, with a get-well card that added, "No campaign is worth the name without you." Old H.S.T., however, had already welcomed Goldwater to Missouri with a radio blast taped before the accident and broadcast afterward. Caught with his timing somewhat out of joint, Harry could only mutter, "That's one for the books."

He looked dreamy enough caressing the strings. But Harpo Marx, who died Sept. 28 at the age of 75, left his widow, Susan Fleming Marx, a down-to-earth estate, worth between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000, in stocks, royalties, a $200,000 home and a $200,000 ranch, both near Palm Springs. Pending settlement of the estate, she and her four children were granted a $4,000-a-month allowance by the court.

Vassar College formally inaugurated its seventh president, Oxford-educated Alan Simpson, 52, in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., following the 18-year reign of Sarah Gibson Blanding. One of his first tasks will be to take part in a reading of George Bernard Shaw's Don Juan in Hell at a Vassar dormitory. He will play the devil.

In Geneva, Indonesia's peripatetic President Sukarno, 63, took in The Fall of the Roman Empire, and after a look-see at the nonaligned nations' conference in Cairo, he could hardly wait to get a line on Rome itself. There he wined a lovely Gina Lollobrigida, 35, at lunch, and she, in turn, dined and danced with him to the Volare of Domenico Modugno at a cool little do she threw for 70 friends and countrymen. She even took him to a private showing of her latest flick, Woman of Straw, and her company to Sukarno, as the legions of paparazzi recorded, was clearly a triumph of imperialism.

"My opuscula," Ian Fleming once said, "are written for warm-blooded heterosexuals in trains, airplanes and beds." But as bedtime tales for small boys, they were not quite right. So the late novelist created a magical car in stories he told his son Caspar, now 12, and some of them will be published under the title, Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. The car's owner, Commander Caractacus Pott, fortyish, is rather like Commander James Bond, except that he has a family, and the car, a supercharged Paragon Panther, is a near cousin to 007's Bentley. "You see those knobs and levers and lights on the dashboard?" asks Pott. "We'll find out what they're for in time." But of course.

When she was a girl, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, 64, younger sister of Jawaharlal Nehru, awoke from a nap outdoors one day to find a cobra looming over her, its great hood spread. Soothsayers promptly foretold a remarkable career for her--and that she has had, as India's Ambassador to the U.S.S.R. (1947-49), the U.S. (1949-52), and first and only woman President of the U.N. General Assembly (1953-54). Now eight times a grandmother, and Governor of Maharashtra state, Mme. Pandit has been chosen by the Congress Party as their candidate in next month's by-election to fill the parliamentary seat of her late brother. When elected, she is expected to join her niece, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, in the Cabinet.

A real jigsaw-puzzle addict doesn't want to be helped. He doesn't care whether he's got a smidgen of ear, nose or throat, never happier than when assembling a blue pond mirroring blue barns and sky. Now he ought to be ecstatic, for someone has produced the ultimate: a puzzle made from a canvas by the late Abstractionist Jackson Pollock. Convergence, it's called, being squiggles of red, white, yellow, blue, black and--well, the critics admired the original's "burgeoning sensitivity." Says Pollock's widow, Artist Lee Krasner, "At first, I thought ooh-la-la, that's not for me. Then I realized it was a very good reproduction."

At the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner in Manhattan, Happy Rockefeller, 38, looked serene. And she grew even cheerier before the week was out. She and her ex-husband, Dr. James Murphy, who won custody of their four children a month ago, had not agreed on visiting rights, but the judge assigned to settle the question produced a generous arrangement. Happy gets James, 13, Margaretta, 11, Carol, 8, and Malindla, 4, every other weekend, two summer months, at Thanksgiving, and for half of Christmas and Easter vacations. On Christmas and Easter Sunday, both parents may spend some time with the children.

Every literatus helps. So thought Manhattan Hostess Jean vanden Heuvel, 30, daughter of the man who founded M.C.A., as she marshaled a playbill of talent in her West Side apartment to rally the "intellectual vote" to Bobby Kennedy. Speakers were Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Economist John K. Galbraith, while the audience included Insider John Gunther, Playwright Paddy Chayefsky, Conductor Leonard Bernstein, Actress Lauren Bacall, and Sculptress Gloria Vanderbilt. Upstart Playwright Arthur Kopit, 24, author of Oh Dad, Poor Dad, however, demonstrated still more vividly Bobby's kinship with the highbrows by getting bounced over a divan by a friendly tap from Paris Review Editor George Plimpton during a literary discussion. "You see, the swimming-pool syndrome is still with us," quipped Kopit, as he stuffed his cigar into Plimpton's drink.

The hoods crashed her Park Avenue triplex, tied her up, and tried to force her to open the safe. Scat! she said. "You can kill me, but I'm not going to let you rob me." Whereupon they vamoosed. The teaching sisters of Mallinckrodt Convent in Mendham, N.J., read about it, wrote her congratulating her on her courage, and asked her to "keep us in your prayers." Nonagenarian Beauty Queen Helena Rubinstein did more than that. She directed the Helena Rubinstein Foundation, an organization usually devoted to Israeli causes, to award the convent $10,000 for the "education of future teachers."

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