"Now," said the lawyer, "you have alleged in your complaint that your husband has treated you in a cruel and inhuman manner." "Well," came the soft, well-rehearsed response, "my husband has become interested in another woman.'' When the five-minute colloquy in a Los Angeles court ended, the 3 1/2-year marriage of Cineminx Debbie Reynolds and Crooner Eddie Fisher was over. Except for the property settlement and alimony. Eddie was free, although under California law he may not marry the other woman, Actress Elizabeth Taylor, until the divorce becomes final after a year. But freedom's price was high. Debbie kept: a Palm Springs ranch, seven life insurance policies, three bank accounts, a Lincoln, the family camping equipment, a Jeep equipped for uranium prospecting, title to their $125,000 West Los Angeles home; got custody of and support for their two children, alimony of $36,000 for a start, dropping to $10,000 if she reweds. Federal law will let Eddie list the alimony as a tax deduction over the years.

The Tennessee legislature got set this week to pass a joint resolution asking the Internal Revenue Service to go easy on World War I's ailing one-man gang, Sergeant Alvin Cullum York, 72, long saddled with an income tax bill of $85,422 for royalties (claimed by York to be capital gains) earned from a 1941 movie of his life. Sympathetic taxmen hinted a settlement could be reached to let broke, bedridden Hero York keep his frame house, his mountainside farm.

Lapping up quaint local customs on his round-the-world junket, West Berlin's personable Mayor Willy Brandt, like many another tourist, got himself deco rated with leis on arrival in Honolulu, later received a wide-eyed introduction, from a willing brace of island beauties, to the pasty pleasures of two-finger poi.*

Clearly not having the time of his life, Author William Saroyan sailed for a film assignment in Yugoslavia, disclosed a little human comedy all his own: "I owe $30,000 in back income taxes. I don't have anything except old clothes." In fact, he added, "I need about $200,000 to get on my feet"--and unless he gets it, he might stay abroad the rest of his life.

After weeks of woolly press speculation that she would marry the 39-year-old Shah of Iran (TIME, Feb. 2), Italy's tall, lissome Princess Maria Gabriella, 19, at last had her own say on the matchmaking. "I'll never marry a man I do not love," she told Rome's II Messaggero. "Since I do not love him, I will not marry the Shah of Iran, assuming he has indicated such a wish." But the press quickly offered another candidate: suave, blond Don Juan Carlos, 21, son of the Spanish Pretender, who danced attendance on the princess on a 1954 cruise. This time Maria's denial was strikingly vague: "I only wish to finish my studies."

Acting on the advice of a medical evaluation board, the Marine Corps began honorable discharge proceedings on Corporal Matthew McKeon, a staff sergeant drill instructor until he led six recruits to their death on a night march through the swamps of Parris Island, S.C. nearly three years ago. Troubled by a ruptured spinal disk, McKeon, twelve years a leatherneck, gets $5,700 in severance pay, said simply: "I hate to leave the corps."

After 29 years of marriage, convicted Perjurer Alger Hiss, 54, now assistant to the president of Manhattan's combmaking Feathercombs, Inc., separated from his bookish, Quaker wife Priscilla, 55. Responsible, said friends, was no third party, but simply the wear and tear of the years. The reticent Hisses had no comment.

Faded Cinemidol Nelson Eddy warmed at the news: a persistent trickle of sentimental interest had at last nudged a recording of his over the million mark in sales. The bestselling old song from his heart: a vibrato-cluttered duet of Indian Love Call waxed 23 years ago with his cinema costar, Jeannette Macdonald.

In Manhattan, a federal judge ruled that pudgy, camel-voiced Hoodlum Frank Costello, 68, now serving a five-year stretch for income tax evasion, had lied about his record as a Prohibition rumrunner in a 1925 naturalization hearing, ordered the Italian-born gambler's U.S. citizenship revoked.

Metropolitan Opera Baritone Leonard Warren wound up for the climax of his aria ("Piet`a, rispetto, amore" in Act IV of Verdi's Macbeth) during an RCA Victor recording session, reached hard for a high A, made it. So did a small crackle. Engineers demanded another try. Several takes and crackles later, a production hand noted tiny crinkles in an oversize mirror, held a blanket over it and at last muffled the unsung obbligato. Next day, RCArtisans began dismantling the offender with screwdriver and chisel, instead of vocal chords, as Glassbreaker Warren said in pride: "When I broke a mirror as a boy, they called it vandalism. Now they're calling it bel canto."

*A sour Hawaiian mush made from taro root, which is pounded into pulp and left to ferment; it is always eaten by hand.

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