"Emotionally, I'm sure Arthur is very pleased with this result," said former U.S. Davis Cup Captain Donald Dell, after a seven-nation committee in London banned racist South Africa from this year's Davis Cup competition. The last straw, apparently, was the government's recent refusal to grant black Tennis Star Arthur Ashe a visa to play in South African tournaments. In Melbourne, Australia, the quiet pro from Richmond termed the decision "an empty victory, from which I will get about five minutes' emotional satisfaction."

Stopping over in Bangkok, Dramatist Arthur Miller speculated that if Willy Loman, the frustrated hero of Miller's tragic Death of a Salesman, were around today, he would be a member of the Silent Majority.

After leading the Israel Philharmonic through a performance of Beethoven's "Eroica," visiting Conductor Leonard Bernstein exclaimed "I love her!" and clasped Golda Meir in an embrace that nearly knocked the Premier off her feet. "Not even Jacqueline got one like that," noted one Israeli. Mrs. Meir, 71, giggled and wore a wide grin for the rest of the evening.

A single screening of the documentary King: A Filmed Record . . . Montgomery to Memphis raised about $3,500,000 to continue the late Dr. Martin Luther King's civil rights and antipoverty campaigns. The film drew more than 700,000 patrons at theaters in the U.S. and abroad. Among them, at the Fox Theater in downtown Atlanta, were Mrs. Coretta King and her four children: Yolanda, 15, Martin, 12, Bernice, 7, and Dexter, 9, who shows an unmistakable resemblance to his father.

Richard Burton told David Frost on TV that his worst moment as an actor was a long-ago scene as Prince Hal in Shakespeare's Henry IV. After some lusty drinking and a prolonged period onstage, Burton wet his chain mail. He then played a duel scene with Sir Michael Redgrave, as Hotspur, and broke his sword. Forced to win the duel without a blade, he hoisted the bulky knight to his shoulder and tossed him across the stage. "Dear boy," said Sir Michael backstage, "I thought you were sweating rather more than usual."

Charles H. Kuhl, a floor sweeper in South Bend, Ind., was a 27-year-old soldier in 1943 when the late General George S. Patton accused him of malingering and slapped him across the face with a pair of gloves--an outburst that may have cost Patton his command of the Seventh Army. Now that the film Patton, starring George C. Scott (TIME, Feb. 9), re-creates Kuhl's agony, the victim recalls: "As I started out of the [hospital] tent, he booted me in the fanny. They hid me in the litter bearers' tent until he left." Kuhl, who proved to have malaria, adds: "I think he was suffering a little battle fatigue himself."

New York City's mail strike briefly deprived the N.B.A.'s Eastern-champion Knickerbockers of two key basketball players. Mike Riordan, who plays guard, was called up by his National Guard unit to drive a mail truck. Cazzie Russell, who plays forward, played guard--in front of the Kingsbridge armory. Guardsman Cazzie's change of uniform fooled neither the photographers nor the kids, who gave the big sentinel little opportunity to relax at his post.

Even his grave is for sale. Winifred Wagner, 72, said to have been idolized by Adolf Hitler, is disposing of the estate of her father-in-law, Richard Wagner. The package includes every relic relative to the composer: handwritten scores and sketches of sets for most of his operas; his letters; his piano; his butterfly collection; the Haus Wahnfried, where he spent his last years; and the villa's garden, where Wagner and his wife Cosima are buried. The asking price: $4,000,000.

Pot in the palace? Indeed, if one can believe John W. Lennon, M.B.E. (resigned). The Beatle, who sent back his decoration last year to protest Britain's Biafra policy, told an interviewer that he, Paul, George and Ringo were a trifle high when Queen Elizabeth invested them in 1965. "I took it as a joke," said John. "We were bursting like mad because we'd just been having a joint in the Buckingham Palace toilets. We were so nervous." Replied a palace spokesman: "Obviously when people come along to an investiture, toilet facilities are available."

"I have done everything I possibly could for Claude," insists Pablo Picasso. Claude disagrees. And Claude de Ruiz Picasso, 22, son of the artist and his former mistress Franc,oise Gilot (Life with Picasso), has filed suit in a French court to be declared a legal heir to his 88-year-old father's vast fortune in art, stocks and real estate.

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