Widows of U.S. Senators sometimes make appealing Senators themselves: Oregon's Maurine Neuberger was appointed to fill out her husband Richard's term in 1960, went on to win another six years of her own. But the Senate's newest widow quickly put an end to any such speculation. Paris-trained Nancy Kefauver, 52, has always preferred painting to politics, and her whistle-stopping smiles were only surface-deep during the quarter century in which Estes Kefauver held first a House, then a Senate seat from Tennessee. She will remain in Washington, painting portraits on commission, and holding art classes. Says Nancy: "I was interested in helping my husband, not in politics."

So great was the crush at Montreal's airport that Elizabeth Taylor, 31, forgot herself for a second. "Where's my daughter? Where's my husband?" she screamed. Ah well, no matter, said Liz after she finally collected Liza, 6, and Dickie, 37. "We'll be married in three months." Then it was on to another frenetic touchdown in Mexico, where Burton (see CINEMA) has the part of the tourist guide in Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana, and started off pretty beastly by punching a photographer in the nose. At last everyone simmered down enough for Liz to announce in tones last tested on Mount Everest: "I'm here because Mr. Bur ton is here." Back in Manhattan, meanwhile, Sybil Burton, 33, had a better line: "My children and I have him tied hand and foot like so much lend-lease.

When I get him back, he will be $2,000,000 richer."

Heavy surf and high winds battered the Scottish coast, but a fishing boat carried the doctor through to his Very

Important Patient on lonely Jura Island in the Hebrides. On a fishing outing far from London and the Denning report (see THE WORLD), Lady Astor, 31, beautiful third wife of Lord Astor, suddenly collapsed and was in danger of losing her second child, due in March. On doctor's orders, the former London fashion model, nee Bronwen Pugh, was hurried back to the mainland, rough seas or no, and rushed supine, but smiling, on a stretcher to a Glasgow nursing home.

Trekking off to Africa to star in an adventure called The Lion last year, Cinemactor William Holden, 45, pawed the ground a little himself after he caught sight of his costar, lissome French Actress Capucine, 30. Next the two were teamed in a Far East thriller called Wherever Love Takes Me, in which Holden plays a rubber planter and Capucine is a Eurasian schoolteacher who becomes his mistress. By that time Holden had a pretty fair idea where love was taking him. He announced that he was breaking up his 22-year marriage (two sons) to former Hollywood Star Brenda Marshall.

Ballpark shadows always fall faster and lie longer at the tag end of the baseball season, and for St. Louis' Stan ("The Man") Musial, 42, they wrote the end to an illustrious career. Retiring at last after 22 seasons with the Cardinals, Musial made his final road trip around the National League, and sentimental fans pulled out all stops. Cincinnati gave him a red-cushioned rocking chair, and in Chicago they added a shotgun, silver bowl and honorary city citizenship. But the biggest bawl of all awaited Musial back home. Along with Wife Lil, Musial in white tie and tails attended St. Louis' tony Veiled Prophet Ball, watched Debutante Daughter Geraldine Ann, 18, parade as a maid of honor. The Cardinal management announced that he would become a vice president of the club, and the city planned to erect a 9-ft. statue of Stan and change the name of Oakland Avenue to Musial Avenue.

"Gosh," blurted Stan. "They should wait till I'm dead first."

Casting an esthetic eye over the "harmony of life," Architect Walter Gropius, 80, found it seriously out of plumb. "Science has overshadowed other components," Gropius told a convocation on architecture and education at Wil liams College. The modern world has become "a slipcover civilization. Instead of striving for leadership through moral initiative, modern man has developed a kind of Gallup-poll mentality, a mechanistic conception of relying on quantity instead of quality." Gropius' design for harmony: a program of "search rather than research. In our era of expediency and mechanization, the predominant educational aim ought to call forth creative habits; vocational skill should be a byproduct only, a matter of course."

Petticoat Junction was the upstart show's name and it turned out to be a turn in the coaxial road for near-septuagenarian Jack Benny, 39. Miffed because CBS not only failed to pick up his option for next season but also stuck this year's Jack Benny Show behind the petticoats in a bad time slot (Tues., 9:30 p.m. E.D.T.), Benny took the fork marked NBC for 1964. So happy was the rival network to see him (and his insurance-company sponsor) that it forgot about bygones. Thirteen years ago Benny made the same sort of detour from NBC to CBS.

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