On the Go

On one of the rare occasions when she was not booked for one of the formal parties given in her honor by various kings, presidents, generals and ambassadors, Margaret Truman skipped the Paris Opera, went off for an evening of nightclubbing--with two Secret Service men, a French Surete inspector, and the usual photographers and reporters as escorts. After spending most of her time dodging the photographers, she decided to call it a night. For Paris, it had been a pretty dull one; but she was accomplishing a mission. "This pleasant, unaffected young woman," said London's Daily Express, "endears not only herself but her father to the millions in Europe." Added Paris' Le Monde: "She is not pretty, but her smile . . . and her complete lack of affectation have won everybody." Back home the New York World-Telegram and Sun agreed: "After some of the dames who've represented American womanhood in Europe's salons and saloons, she must be like a breath of air straight from the clover patch . . . We do not want Europeans to think all our women do is go around marrying Moslem princes and staging big maternity exhibitions, like Rita [Hayworth] did. Nor do we wish our dolls generally to get a reputation for flirting with bullfighters, as Ava [Gardner] did."

With a television and a radio show already on her cluttered schedule, Eleanor Roosevelt, 66, took on still another histrionic chore: a series of 52 half-hour TV shows called Once Upon a Time, in which she will narrate in five languages the fairy tales of 52 nations while puppets act them out. Her producers: Roosevelt Enterprises, Inc., run by son Elliott with the assistance of son John.

Arriving at the Paris Opera for the French premiere of Tales of Hoffmann, French Ballerina Ludmilla Tcherina, one of the film's starring dancers, struck some new fashion notes: a diamond bauble pasted on her forehead, a small blue feather dove on each of her bared shoulders.

International Episodes

In a roundabout way, word came to London from Spain that the Festival of Britain's description of Sir Francis Drake as "the first man to sail 'round the world" just wasn't so. Drake set sail in 1577, patriotic Spaniards pointed out, and Portugal's Ferdinand Magellan started in 1519. Though Magellan was killed (on Mactan Island) before going full circle, his crew completed the trip.

Arriving in Berlin on his triumphal tour of Europe, Middleweight Boxing Champion Sugar Ray Robinson (TIME, June 25) ran into some peculiar local customs. In the first round of an exhibition match, he floored Germany's Gerhard Hecht, who promptly claimed that he had been fouled. When Robinson protested, the referee explained that a kidney punch is illegal in Germany, adding: "I have to call it a foul. I want to leave the ring alive." When Robinson flattened Hecht again, after an impromptu, one-minute rest period, he soon found out what the referee meant--and learned a little about German boxing fans. Angrily taking up the cry of foul, the crowd filled the air with a barrage of pebbles, pop bottles and seat cushions that sent Robinson scurrying for cover with an escort of 20 cops. Not until he had escaped from Berlin aboard a U.S. military train for Frankfurt did Robinson finally learn the official outcome of the fight: no decision.

Distressed to learn that in the last ten months 576,996 gallons of vodka had been turned out in the U.S., Mrs. D. Leigh Colvin. president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union,/- sounded the alarm: "Americans certainly should know enough to let it alone, after learning its effect on our diplomats at Yalta and Potsdam."

One by one, the members of Madrid's local nobility politely regretted that they would be unable to attend a reception for Otto of Habsburg, pretender to the Austrian throne, and his bride, Princess Regina. It was all the doing of Don Juan, pretender to the Spanish throne and son of Spain's ex-Queen, Victoria Eugenie, who failed to receive an invitation to Otto's wedding last month. "I am sorry," said Don Juan, "but that ill-mannered individual was rude to my mother. I cannot forgive him."

The Strenuous Life

An eight-month-old South African lion cub named Chaka (after the early 19th Century Zulu tyrant) was put aboard a plane in Johannesburg, headed for Moscow as a gift from the Russian consulate to Joseph Stalin.

Britain's Sir Jocelyn Lucas, Tory M.P. for Brentford and Chiswick and part-time dog breeder, received an order for one of his female Sealyhams from a satisfied customer in Moscow who already has a male one: Soviet Propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg.

In Ann Arbor, Mich., His Imperial Highness, Prince Mahmoud Reza Pahlevi, 24, brother of Iran's Shah, got another traffic ticket--his eighth in two years at the University of Michigan--for buzzing along the campus in his Cadillac at 60 m.p.h. Hauled into the police station, he suddenly bolted, tried to reach his car, but was nabbed by cops and brought back weeping to get a court summons.

/- A misnomer. The W.C.T.U. insists not on temperance, but on abstinence unqualified.

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