On the Record

By E. Graydon Carter

Perhaps only a tribute to Singer Marian Anderson, 79, could have brought together those operatic rivals Shirley Verrett, 50, and Grace Bumbry, 45, for a performance on the same stage. The first black person to sing with the Metropolitan Opera, Anderson has been inspiration and mentor to the two younger singers. Both, in fact, are Marian Anderson Scholarship winners. And so Verrett and Bumbry, who have occasionally flung verbal darts at each other, put aside their simmering feud long enough to participate in a rousing 80th-birthday tribute to Anderson last week at New York's Carnegie Hall. Since the two women and Carnegie Hall are much in demand, the birthday celebration had to be held on a date that fit everyone's schedule; Anderson's birthday is actually on Feb. 27. No problem, said Anderson, adding, "It's not everyone who gets to celebrate two birthdays in one year."

The official dinner at the White House was given for visiting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, 53, and his wife Suzie, but the principal topic of discussion was china. "President Reagan, Mrs. Reagan, dear friends," said the Egyptian leader, rising to propose a toast. "Before I start, I would like to first congratulate Mrs. Reagan for the new china, which is very elegant and very beautiful." Mubarak, in his diplomatic way, was referring of course to Nancy Reagan's celebrated $209,508, 220-place, 4,372-piece set of Lenox china, paid for last year by the Maryland-based Knapp Foundation. Used for the first time last week, the new dinner service, with a raised presidential gold seal in the center of the plates and a red-and-gold lattice border, was accompanied by Morgantown crystal from the Kennedy White House and vermeil flatware purchased during the Monroe Administration. When one fretful guest reminded President Reagan of a Greek custom of breaking plates, Ronnie smiled, then said of such guests, "Well, they will either never be invited, or we'll just use the old china."

An overwhelmingly popular monarch in an egalitarian age, Queen Elizabeth II, 55, passed a milestone last week--her 30th anniversary as Queen of the United Kingdom and head of the Commonwealth.

The Queen celebrated her pearl jubilee in the company of her husband, Prince Philip, 60, and her corgis, a breed Elizabeth made famous when she took to it in the days when she was a princess. Although she has outlasted all but ten British monarchs, Her Majesty is still 34 years shy of the mark set by her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria (1837-1901). If Elizabeth does set a new record, it will not be realized until the year 2014. Heir Apparent Prince Charles, 33, would then be 67.

It began, as too many sports stories do these days, with a contract dispute. But this time the disgruntled central figure was not a brawny athlete but a scrawny newsman, Sports Columnist Dick Young, 64, of the tottering New York Daily News. Irascible, street-wise and savvy about his sport since 1941, the year that the New York Yankees' Joe DiMaggio hit safely in 56 games, Young has illuminated baseball for decades. Disturbed by continuing reports that the News (daily circ. 1,480,000) is about to collapse, Young asked the paper to guarantee 1/2 the remaining 2 years of his $100,000-plus-per-year contract. "When they said they couldn't, I just looked elsewhere," says Young, whose prose has appeared in the News for 40 years. Elsewhere, it turned out, was the News's downtown, downscale rival, the New York Post (circ. 764,000). Unabashed about running self-laudatory promotion pieces as news items, the Post trumpeted Young's defection to its sports department with a fanfare of front-page headlines: DICK YOUNG JOINS THE POST, DICK YOUNG TELLS IT LIKE IT IS, "WHY I JOINED THE POST." By week's end the promotional grist had become the news story it pretended to be. The News hit Young and the Post with a pair of lawsuits seeking $750,000 in damages from each, forestalling Young's debut as a Post columnist. Said Young: "I saw a lot of newspapermen just as good as me go without jobs when the [New York] Herald Tribune shut down. I just want to work."

It sounded suspiciously like a kickoff speech for a Senate campaign by Gore Vidal, 56. Speaking before more than 1,200 students and teachers at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Vidal, a playwright (Visit to a Small Planet), author (Burr, Creation) and political gadfly, seemed to be toying with the notion that he would challenge California Governor Edmund Brown Jr., 41, in the state's senatorial primary. Said Vidal: "A race against Jerry would be absolutely irresistible." Vidal, now working on a play about Abraham Lincoln and a political novel, Duluth, addressed himself to a mixed bag of issues. Among other things, he proposed that a constitutional convention might be in order--"It's been 200 years since the first time around"--as well as stiff reforms in the criminal justice system. One Vidal proposal, a ban on all political advertising, may have been inspired by personal necessity. Asked how he would raise an estimated $1.5 million to wage a Senate race, Gore replied, "I don't know. When you get sums that large, it isn't just because they like the twinkle in your eye."

Joseph Persico, speechwriter, on the wealth of his former boss Nelson Rockefeller: "I once calculated that his giving a panhandler $1,850 represented roughly the same financial sacrifice of a middle-class person giving a dime."

Tommy Lasorda, 54, Los Angeles Dodgers manager, on contract negotiations with Mexican Pitcher Fernando Valenzuela: "The first thing Fernando wants is Texas back."

Jan Scruggs, Viet Nam veteran who conceived and raised funds for the proposed Viet Nam Veterans Memorial, on congressional criticism of it: "You can get furious seeing politicians getting involved, with two out in the bottom of the ninth, with not one red cent from Uncle Sam involved and with thousands of parents writing and telling how they can't wait to visit this remembrance of their dead sons."

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