The Working Class

Relaxed in a wooden armchair at Chartwell, his 300-acre Kentish estate, Winston Churchill chewed his ubiquitous cigar and watched his tractors at work, while Anthony Eden, No. 2 man of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition, carefully arranged his well-tailored frame on the grass beside his host (see cut).

From the No. 1 Communist of the U.S., William Z. Foster, and some associates came a birthday posy for old Party Matriarch Mother (Ella Reeve) Bloor. "Your 88th birthday," they reminded her, "sees 850 million in the world who have moved away from the bloody way of imperialism."

To make assurance doubly sure, posterity-minded Robert R. ("Bertie") McCormick, publisher of "the world's greatest newspaper," immolated select portions of his own prose (Freedom of the Press, What Is a Newspaper) inside the cornerstone of his Chicago Tribune's new radio station building on Michigan Avenue.

In Rome, Boxer-turned-Cinemactor Buddy (Jacob Jr.) Baer, hulking (6 ft. 6 1/2 in.) brother of ex-Heavyweight Champ Max Baer, came out second best in a tussle with the King of Beasts. Passing by a lion's cage on the set of MGM's Quo Vadis, Buddy scarcely had time to duck when a big paw shot through the bars, ripped his shirt from shoulder to waist, clawed an inch-deep gash in his left arm.

Tennis Player Gertrude ("Gorgeous Gussie") Moron, whose lengthy pigtails have become almost as famous as her lace panties, shocked her admirers by appearing at the London airport with a "sort of an overgrown urchin cut." Explained Gussie: "They were getting on my nerves. I got up this morning and there was my hair down the back of my neck. So I got out my scissors and snipped it off."

The Lucky Ones

To express his gratitude for Marshall Plan aid, a Cretan mountaineer named Estakios Protopapadakis sent a present to Harry Truman: a silky-haired, two-year-old mountain goat named Kri Kri. "Kri Kri doesn't smell too strong," Protopapadakis assured the President, "and he won't butt you."

From Hollywood, where he is working on a movie called Mr. Imperium, Basso Ezio (Some Enchanted Evening) Pinza, 58, announced that his second wife, Doris, 31, is expecting a third child in December.

Among the winners of this year's Horatio Alger awards (presented by the American Schools & Colleges Association): Hotelman Conrad Hilton (who started out with a five-room adobe hacienda); Alexander Harris (who rose from a polisher of cigarette-lighters to president of the Ronson Art Metal Works, Inc.); Thomas E. Courtney (from $6-a-week car washer to president of the $14 million Northern Illinois Corp.).

Two days after he was divorced by highstrung Cinemactress Bette Davis, 42, William Grant Sherry, 35. announced that he would marry Marion Richards, 23, nursemaid to his and Bette's three-year-old daughter Barbara. Said Sherry: "Marion is a very spiritually impressive girl."

For Izvestia, the Communist house organ which has often belabored him for "groveling before the West," Soviet Composer Dmitri Shostakovich obligingly picked his own "rogue's gallery of warmongers": Novelists John (Grapes of Wrath) Steinbeck and oldtime Socialist

Upton Sinclair; France's Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, ex-Communists Andre Malraux and Andre Gide. First place went to Steinbeck, who "jumped from the camp of progress and love of humanity into the camp of frantic reaction, barbarism and cannibalism."

The Common Touch

By trading in their 1948 Daimler, a present from the R.A.F., Britain's Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip were able to buy a Rolls Royce, the first of a new line called the Phantom IV. Cost: about $18,000.

Two months after the French National Assembly repealed the Royal Family Exile Law, the Comte de Paris, 42, pretender to the nonexistent throne of France, saw his beloved Paris for the first time in 25 years. As he motored up to Royalist headquarters on the Rue de Constantine, a small, stouthearted band of the faithful cried: "Vive le roi!" Said the Comte: "I am happier than it is possible to be."

From Geneva, where he is still waiting to be called to his throne, Belgium's King Leopold announced that his second wife, the Princess de Rethy, is expecting a baby (her second) early next year.

"Who on earth advised the Queen to wear the outfit she had for the Somerset-Thynne wedding?" asked the London Sunday Pictorial, after a long, horrified look at a news picture of King George and Queen Elizabeth (see cut). "The Queen is a delightful personality. On most of her public appearances, she is superbly dressed . . . Yet, [in this case] . . . the hat is too large, too heavy and too drooping . . . The skimpy cape is both broadening and shortening. The dark edging makes the dress look like a dressing gown with the sash undone ... All in all, a misguided effort that will not enhance our growing reputation as a fashion-conscious nation . . ."

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