Beachcombing

A craze for de luxe "camping" on the beach is this season's big fad on the once-again-prosperous French Riviera. One hotel leased an entire island, which it promptly covered with tents. Another, at fashionable Cap d'Antibes. has put up tents in its gardens, erected a string of midget-sized bungalows on its beach. Despite the spacious comfortable hotel rooms only a few yards away, diplomats, statesmen, cinema celebrities have preferred to live like beachcombers in abodes which for the most part lack plumbing, hot water, screens.

Most prominent of the Riviera's simple-life addicts last week: U. S. Secretary of the Treasury and Mrs. Morgenthau (they enjoyed two daily swims, shunned night clubs except for one fling, got to bed at 10 every night); U. S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Mrs. Kennedy and eight young Kennedys; British Secretary of State for Scotland Walter Elliott (served every morning by a procession of hotel servants bringing his breakfast, hot water, clean towels); white-trousered Cinemactress Marlene Dietrich; the Duke & Duchess of Windsor. No French gendarmes watched this year to arrest nude bathers, since business-hungry hotel proprietors had persuaded the police to disregard such trifles as strapless bathing suits.

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