Fair Game

After his Mexican "vacation" fiasco with Cinemactress Ava Gardner, Crooner Frank Sinatra turned up in Reno, called reporters in to make his peace with the press and hand out a bit of news: he will sing in Nevada nightclubs for six weeks, then start his own divorce proceedings against wife Nancy. But somehow everyone was beginning to find the whole affair a little wearisome. Yawned the New York Daily News in a one-sentence editorial: "Anybody know of a bigger bore just now than Frank Sinatra?"

After 14 years of marriage to onetime Heavyweight Puncher Lou Nova, his wife decided she wanted a divorce. Among the reasons: his habit of putting his bare feet on the dining room table next to his mother-in-law's lemon meringue pie.

When Manhattan reporters caught Doris Duke stepping off the same plane with Playboy Pat di Cicco, they asked the routine question, got a routine answer: "I just happened to meet him aboard the plane. I hadn't seen him for years and I hardly recognized him. I was glad to have somebody to talk with, but every time I talk to someone they try to make a romance out of it."

In Portland, Ore., photographers gathered to record the second birthday of Nicholas Delano Seagraves, first great-grandchild of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Young Nicholas, a husky 30-pounder, obliged by mounting a one-eared toy donkey and flashing a smile that had more than passing resemblance to great-grandmother Eleanor. "He loves to eat," said his mother, the former "Sistie" Dall, "and there isn't anything he doesn't like. He has all the teeth he's supposed to have, but I don't know just how many that is."

Affairs of State

Off for a holiday rest, Britain's Prime Minister Clement Attlee arrived at a resort hotel in Jotunheimen, Norway, where 25 fellow countrymen on tour greeted him with a burst of song ("For he's a jolly good fellow"). Later, starting out on a mountain hike, the Prime Minister firmly refused to wear sunglasses. Said he to his wife: "It seems to me that the world looks too gloomy through them."

In San Remo, Italy, members of the honeymoon party bubbled with the news that 17-year-old Queen Narriman, who married Egypt's Playboy King Farouk last May, is expecting a child.

In Washington, while a crowd of curious underlings looked on, Secretary of State Dean Acheson walked into the department's cafeteria, took his place in line, loaded up a tray and enjoyed a hearty lunch. The food, he announced afterwards, is just as good as he is used to in the private dining room upstairs, if not better--"It's hotter."

In San Sebastian, U.S. Ambassador to Spain Stanton Griffis told why he has taken to toting a .38-cal. automatic along to the beach when he goes swimming: police told him that an anti-Franco group had threatened his life.

Minister to Luxembourg Perle Mesta told a Saturday Review of Literature reporter that she liked to have an Air Force band at her G.I. parties. "Those cute things, just 19 or 20, away from home . . . They're just so cunning. They're Perle this and Perle that. Then they'll look shy at me and say, 'Would it be good manners if I used this fork?' " She hoped, Perle added, that people no longer considered her frivolous. "They've changed a little, don't you think? They thought I was just a partygiver . .. Well, I'll tell you, I'm just the hardest-working girl you know."

On his recent European jaunt, said Bernard Baruch, he had spent two days visiting Old Friend Winston Churchill, who "talks about nothing but horses. He can't hear any better than I can, but he won't wear an ear machine." Another conversation was reported by James Eldridge of the American Association for the United Nations, just back in Chicago from London. Curious to know what political party Churchill would have chosen had he been an American, Eldridge dropped a leading remark: "I believe you're Tory enough that you'd be a Midwest Republican." "Well," answered Churchill, "you don't think I'd be as bad as Mr. Taft, do you?"

Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh declined with "deep regret" an invitation from New York's Official Greeter Grover Whalen to visit the city on their fall tour. Meanwhile, the duke was busy boning up on Canadian history and making speeches at home (see SCIENCE). He also found time to attend a London Variety Club luncheon at which he was given a life membership certificate (putting him on equal footing with Harry Truman) and hailed as "Brother Barker." As just plain "Papa," he joined his wife on the lawn of Clarence House, their London home, to give photographers a homey picture of royal family life with Prince Charles and Princess Anne, who is one year old this week, in the crawling stage and the proud possessor of six teeth.

Sunlight & Shadow

The Washington State Bonus Bureau announced that it had passed out $64 million in bonus checks to 191,560 World War II veterans. Among them: General Mark Clark, who claimed residence as owner of a summer home on Puget Sound's Camano Island. Because of length of service (four years overseas), General Clark got close to the state maximum, $675.

Devadas Gandhi, editor of the Hindustan Times, arrived in Manhattan looking for motion pictures of his late father Mohandas Gandhi. His project: a series of film biographies. Profits, if any, will go to ease the lot of India's lepers.

After a skittish mare kicked Oregon's Republican Maverick Wayne Morse smack in the mouth at the Orkney Springs, Va. horse show, Washington reporters called at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Md. to see how the Senator was feeling, got their answer in a written note: "I have learned to roll with political kicks and punches, but I haven't learned how to absorb the kick of a horse yet."

Scheduled to leave this week for the International Poliomyelitis Conference in Copenhagen, Sister Elizabeth Kenny told reporters in Sydney, Australia that her 40-year fight against polio was moving inexorably toward an end. Said she: "I am unwell and incurably so. I only hope I will be spared the time to come home again. I am very happy in my beautiful Toowoomba home among my own relatives and the people among whom I made my discoveries on poliomyelitis. I want to end my days at home."

From Temple, N.H., his family announced that Senator Charles W. Tobey's state of "exhaustion" last month had really been a cerebral hemorrhage from which he is recovering "slowly but surely."

In Hollywood's Gilmore Field, some 11,000 fans turned out to see a wacky softball game billed as the "Out of This World Series." After Captains Bob Hope and Gary Cooper met at home plate, grabbed a bat and mugged for the cameras, the shenanigans got under way. Final score: unknown--no one bothered to tot it up. But a total of $20,000 in gate receipts was turned over to charity.

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