Hearts & Flowers

A flurry of feathers and screeching again issued from the gilded cage of Hollywood's scrappiest lovebirds, Franchot Tone, 47, and Barbara Payton, 25 (TIME, Sept. 24 et seq.). The latest rift, according to Manhattan Gossipist Cholly Knickerbocker, began innocently enough. Barbara, apparently in a pet, ripped a telephone from the wall of their West Side hotel suite and swung it at Franchot, whose ducking has improved since last September when he brawled and was flattened by Barbara's robust friend, Cinemactor Tom Neal. At week's end, Franchot, still in Manhattan, and Barbara, back in Hollywood, both denied the story. But Barbara promptly filed a countersuit for divorce.

On the mend after a hernia operation in a New Orleans hospital, veteran Cinemactor Gary Cooper had plans involving his old friend and hunting companion Ernest Hemingway: "We've been talking about several stories for possible use in the future. He looks fine when he shaves. He lives pretty sanely."

Belgium's young King Baudouin was wearily sitting it out while post-office officials debated whether the first issue of Belgian postage stamps to picture him should show him with or without his heavy horn-rimmed glasses.

Britain's left-wing Laborite Aneurin Bevan, whose noisy tirades against the U.S. have been stilled neither by Winston Churchill nor Clement Attlee, fell silent, canceled his weekend speaking dates because of a laryngitis attack.

A Virginia state trooper accused Bandleader Cab Calloway, oldtime King of Hi-De-Ho, of driving 65 m.p.h. and then offering a $10 bribe to be permitted to swing along merrily to a nearby racetrack.

New Departures

Hollywood Gossipist Hedda Hopper, wearing one of her improbable hats, emerged from a plane at the Charleston, S.C. airport, where she was greeted by Old Friend Bernard Baruch, wearing a dashing cape. Visitor and host motored off to Baruch's Hobcaw Barony estate.

Emperor Hirohito flouted a 2,600-year-old imperial tradition by deciding to enroll his son, Crown Prince Aldhito, in Tokyo's coeducational Peers University.

General & Mrs. Mark W. Clark announced that their daughter Patricia Ann, 25, will marry Army Captain Gordon H. Oosting, 27, the general's aide-de-camp since last July.

On Comic Jimmy Durante's TV show in Hollywood, Margaret Truman was led to a drawing board, blindfolded, handed a crayon and asked to connect a series of jumbled lines. When she finished, Jimmy unbandaged her eyes, rotated the board 90DEG. Margaret's product: "I LIKE IKE." Groaned she: "I don't dare go home tonight."

In The Netherlands, Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard were packing their bags and getting set to say goodbye to their four daughters (Crown Princess Beatrix, 14, Princesses Irene, 12, Margriet, 9, and Marijke, 5). They will fly to Washington, D.C. next week, where they will be President & Mrs. Harry Truman's first guests in the renovated White House.

Onward & Upward

At the Circus Saints and Sinners monthly luncheon gag-fest in Manhattan, Vice President Alben Berkley cheerfully put on a cap & gown and gracefully accepted a few new "honorary" degrees, including a P.H.D. (for Poor Honest Democrat), a B.S. (for Bourbon & Soda), a D.D.T. (for Doing the Darndest for Truman).

In London, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer tapped the Duke of Edinburgh to serve as president of a committee for the design of coins, medals and seals. One of Philip's first chores: helping select a portrait of his wife, Queen Elizabeth, to decorate new coins of the realm.

Among America's best-dressed women of 1952, according to Manhattan's Fashion Academy: Mrs. Estes Kefauver; Cinemactress Ann Sheridan; Broadway Columnist Dorothy Kilgallen; Metropolitan Soprano Marguerite Piazza; Radio Songstress Jo Stafford; Musicomedy Star Vivian (Guys and Dolls) Blaine; Nina Warren, daughter of California's governor. Commented Mrs. Kefauver: "Oh, my goodness! I haven't even bought a new spring suit so far."

After Due Consideration

Dressed in jacket and well-creased slacks, highstrung Cinemactress Katharine Hepburn boarded the liner America for England, where she will play the lead in a Liverpool production of Shaw's The Millionairess. "I've always wanted to do this part," twanged Katy. "This is a wonderful character embodying everything in me that people dislike, but which I like very much."

Delighted by his first fling at moviemaking, British Poet T. S. Eliot modestly said of the screen adaptation of his play Murder in the Cathedral: "I should not regret the experience even were the film which has resulted not the masterpiece which I believe it to be."

In England, oldtime Cinema Comics Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy, doing a personal appearance at a Newcastle theater, looked down their noses at the modern generation: "Present-day comedians, particularly those in America, gain laughs at the expense of someone else's discomfort. Insult gags are a crudity we avoid."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.