COUSY COZY WITH COSA? headlined the impish New York Daily News, and the thought alone was enough to appall the millions who have admired Bob Cousy, 39, onetime basketball superstar with the Boston Celtics and now coach at Boston College. The question arose from an article in LIFE tying Cousy to a Springfield, Mass., saloon owner and syndicate gambler named Andrew Pradella. In an emotional, 70-minute press conference, Cousy choked and sobbed as he admitted that he had known Pradella well for 13 years, had played golf with him and seen him socially. He had learned for the first time of Pradella's connections in 1962, said Bob, "but what do you do when someone comes up and tells you a good friend is a gambler? I suppose I'm guilty of an indiscretion, but that's all I'm guilty of."

He'd like to put Red China in the U.N., settle the Viet Nam issue in the Security Council, and "cut out social security to people like me and give it to the people who need it." Sounds kinda pinko, eh? It was Alf London speaking, the unreconstructed prairie Bull Mooser who went on to become Governor of Kansas and Republican candidate for President in 1936. Laughing fit to bust britches, Landon tossed out a bagful of prickly pears as he celebrated his 80th birthday in Topeka, including a couple for today's Republicans: "They've got to quit kicking labor in the pants; they've got to quit kicking farmers in the pants." As for the notion that he had somehow turned leftist, Landon snorted: "What was the old Bull Moose keynote? 'Pass prosperity around.' What's the difference between that and the welfare state?"

Even if it is for the purpose of attending his first one-man art show, the trip from his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif., to Paris is a long one for a man of 75 to make alone. So Jovian Pornographer Henry Miller (Tropic of Capricorn) will take along a traveling companion--Jazz Singer Hoki Tokuda, 29, who met him at the pingpong table 18 months ago, and will become the fifth Mrs. Miller in time for the journey. Though he is sanguine enough about the marriage, Henry has the yips about his untutored abstract watercolors, which have taken up so much of his time in the past three years that he has stopped writing. "Wait till the French critics tear them apart," Miller moans. "They'll only forgive me because they love me as a writer."

The letter from Author Graham Greene, 62, to the London Times began movingly, with an appeal to the Russian Union of Writers to turn over his blocked royalties to the wives of Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky, the two writers sentenced in February to five and seven years at hard labor for "maligning" Mother Russia in their work. Then, in dazzling transition, Greene added that his letter "must in no way be regarded as an attack" on the Soviet Union, went on to proclaim that he would rather live in Russia than in the U.S., in Cuba than in Bolivia, and in North Viet Nam than in South. Most of Britain's press responded with angry bewilderment. "Does Greene really believe that he would be allowed to publish what he wanted in Russia, Cuba or North Viet Nam?" wondered the Daily Mail. "His career and fortune are dependent on exactly that personal freedom which is unknown in Moscow, Havana and Hanoi, and for the minute exercise of which Sinyavsky and Daniel were jailed."

Midst marital ruins stood: A. & P. Heir Huntingdon Hartford, 56, whose third wife Diane, 25, has recently been seeing the sights with Singer Bobby Darin and now wants a permanent split plus $4,000 weekly alimony; Bimini Beachboy Adam Clayton Powell, 58, whose estranged wife Yvette, 35, has wearied of waiting for him to return to her in Puerto Rico, has finally filed suit for divorce and separate maintenance of $1,500 a month; Palm Beach Socialite Nancy Wiman ("Trink") Carter Wakeman, 47, an heiress to the John Deere tractor fortune, who wound up a row with her playboy second husband William Wakeman, 44, by pointing a .22 pistol at him, firing one shot into his back when he sneered that she hadn't the nerve to shoot, now stands accused of "aggravated assault" while her husband lies in Good Samaritan Hospital permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

A black Rolls-Royce eased to a halt outside the California State Capitol in Sacramento, and out stepped the legislature's guest of honor--dressed in a tattered coat, baggy pants with wide suspenders, and a long, lachrymose mouth curved like an inverted halfmoon. The legislature was honoring him with a special resolution offering "warm gratitude for the pleasure he has brought to the world." Replied Clown Emmett Kelly, 68: "I wish I could hug and kiss every woman here and shake hands with every man." Later, Kelly met his match in another seasoned performer, Governor Ronald Reagan, and, after an exchange of show-bizzy sallies, begged off: "Don't make me laugh, Governor. I can't be seen smiling."

Ill lay: Pope Paul VI, 69, with a cold, intestinal cramps, nausea and intermittent fever that brought him back from his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo and caused him to cancel all appointments; Nellie Connolly, 47, wife of Texas' Democratic Governor, recuperating in Houston's M. D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute after removal of a benign, olive-size growth on her jaw; General Earle G. Wheeler, 59, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recovering at Walter Reed Hospital from a "minor" heart attack that was disclosed by the Pentagon after two days of denials that he suffered from anything other than fatigue.

A Neapolitan city girl like Sophia Loren, 32, understandably gets the willies around wild animals--and this lit tle gathering included a bear, lion, tiger, leopard, ocelot, and a great dark brute dancing a tango. That would be Marcello Mastroianni, 42, Sophia's co-star (with Peter Sellers and Jonathan Winters) in Sophia's first musical, an ABC special called With Love...From Sophia, which will be shown on TV next month. No hoofer, Sophia rehearsed for weeks before taking on Marcello, who danced in a 1966 Italian stage musical. "I'm not Margot," she conceded after taping the elaborate number, "but then Marcello's not Nureyev. So it's great fun."

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