With All Due Respect Lawrence Tibbett, now in his 26th year of baritoning for the Metropolitan Opera, was given a little backstage party and a few handsome knickknacks in honor of the first 25 years. Still in costume from Benjamin Britten's gloomy Peter Grimes (see cut), Larry told his coworkers: "An expression of love from your colleagues is the dearest and most stimulating thing in the world. Now look at what you've done! Tonight you've started me off on another 25 years."

Prince Charles of Edinburgh would soon be officially on the map: his grandfather okayed plans to give the name "Prince Charles Strait" to a channel between Elephant and Cornwallis Islands, in the Antarctic.

Margaret Truman signed a contract to resume the musical career that she interrupted in December 1947. She would start practice in Manhattan next month, warm up with informal recitals next summer, step back on the concert stage next fall.

That Old Feeling

After 18 years of marriage (three of separation), Broadway Producer Irene Mayer Selznick (A Streetcar Named Desire) got her final decree from Cinemagnate David O. He was now free to marry Cinemactress Jennifer Jones, who used to be married to Cinemactor Robert Walker.

In Hollywood, Starlet Martha Vickers (The Big Sleep) announced that she was wearing Mickey Rooney's engagement ring, but they "haven't made any definite plans for the wedding." Mickey's divorce from wife No. 2, Betty Jane Rase, "Miss Birmingham of 1944" (No. 1 was Ava Gardner), becomes final in May; Martha's divorce from Pressagent A. C. Lyles becomes final in September.

In Rome, after a full, footloose year of going steady across two continents, Tyrone Power (divorced last January from Annabella) and Linda Christian (never married before) were busy with the final details of their wedding, to be solemnized this week in Santa Francesca Romana, one of the Eternal City's oldest churches.

In Fort Lee, N.J., pudgy Nightclubber George Ross, 32, was married to onetime Cinemactress Arline Judge, 36, who has, at one time or another, been married to Director Wesley Ruggles, Sportsman Dan Topping, Ad Executive Vincent Morgan Ryan, R.A.F. Captain James Addams, and Bob Topping, Dan's brother (who is now married to Lana Turner).

In Manhattan, Bernarr Macfadden, 80, back from Florida with his bride of nine months, Jonnie Lee, 42, allowed "three days are enough for a second honeymoon."

In Cannes, Aly Khan's secretary mused that his master's coming marriage to Rita Hayworth "will break a lot of hearts. You know how it is. The prince has everything --position, money, looks. The women never let him alone for five minutes, and not only ordinary women, society women, too." The boss's bride-to-be, he had concluded, is "a lovely, simple girl. She's nice in spite of being a movie star, never paints or wears a lot of diamonds."

Inside Sources

Mildred McAfee Morton, wartime boss of the WAVES, who became President of Wellesley at 36 and a bride at 45, decided that college girls aren't interested enough in getting married. Women's colleges have become so eager to open "new doors" to students, said she, that they are closing a main gate: "Young people are almost apologetic about . . . the very important human institution of the family . . . Colleges [have] failed to teach . . . that the family is entirely respectable as a sphere of activity."

Cinemactress Madeleine Carroll, now on Broadway in Goodbye, My Fancy, still had time for an active interest in kids. A member of the U.S. Committee for the U.N. Children's Fund, she posed with pictures of some starving European youngsters (see cut), and offered a possible solution to "adult cynicism": a "children's bill of rights"--a plan under which "each child should be brought to think of children less fortunate than he."

Denmark's King Frederik IX showed up stag for the Copenhagen Opera Ball, explained: "Queen Ingrid invited so many Girl Guides for dinner, there's not a decent chair left for me at the castle."

Roberto Rossellini, talented Italian movie director whose Open City and Paisan rated loud critical huzzahs in the U.S., considered the limitations of the home market: "Our people, except for the intellectuals, don't particularly like to see a re-enactment of their own suffering on the screen," he admitted sadly. "They prefer Betty Grable."

In London, Sir Laurence Olivier had to push and shove his way through a line of all-night standees huddled in the rain, hoping to see the Old Vic's latest hit, The School for Scandal (co-starring Olivier and wife Vivien Leigh). Sir Laurence chilled his young fans further with a word of advice: "It's not worth it."

Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen neatly sidestepped a tough problem at a Newark Knights of Columbus gathering. Would there be another war? "No one knows," the prelate said, "but God and Drew Pearson."

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