Friday, May. 06, 1966

To some, the long beatlemanes and Carnaby Street clothes for boys do smack of something girlish. Nonsense, protested Social Critic Marya Mannes, 61, in a commentary delivered at a Manhattan conference of the National Council of Women. "Hair is both manly and womanly, and the shock of hair on a boy is far more virile and decorative than the crew cut," she said. As for the fashions, observed Marya, who dresses sedately enough herself: "If it's sometimes hard to tell boys and girls apart in boots and sweaters and pants and hair --well, to some of us they spell a wonderful freedom and comfort and an honest sense of the body." Fab.

What a night at the Burtons! Charlie Brown, the beloved Abyssinian cat of Elizabeth Taylor, 34, had slipped outdoors and got lost on the grounds of the rented villa in Rome where Liz, Dick and the menagerie are staying while they shoot The Taming of the Shrew. Next morning at 5, Charlie Brown awakened the family with anguished meowing from the top of a fir tree, and out trooped Liz, Dick and butler to the rescue. The butler bravely ascended the fir, but when he started down with Charlie, the cat squirmed loose, plummeting onto Liz's head and misbehaving on the spot. Then the butler's ladder fell, also clonking Charlie's mistress. Good grief. Charlie Brown!

For a moment, the trip was a fright. As Britain's Queen Mother Elizabeth, 65, rode into Christchurch, New Zealand, a shot cracked somewhere behind the crowd. Police raced through the neighborhood until they found four young boys playing with a rifle that had discharged, slightly wounding a housewife in the crowd. Unruffled, the Queen Mum went trout fishing in Lake Wanaka, catching nothing, despite her fine fly-fisher's wrist. She did set some sort of local record as the only angler who ever waded in wearing hip boots, sports jacket, and a large string of pearls.

"I have no stomach for fighting with widows," announced Conservative Polemicist William F. Buckley Jr., 40. He may have played a bit rough with the widow's late husband, Yale Law School Professor Fowler V. Harper, charging four years ago in his National Review that Harper had given "aid and comfort" to Communist causes by lending his name to a Viet Nam protest petition. Harper died last year before his $500,000 libel suit against Buckley was resolved, but his widow pressed on. Finally, Buckley put the matter to rest by settling for $13,750 in New York State Supreme Court, thus clearing the decks for the next big hassle. Nobel Prizewinner Linus Pauling, labeled a "fellow traveler" by the Review, reported that he will appeal the dismissal of his $1,000,000 libel suit against Buckley and the magazine.

Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins. --The Song of Solomon: 7:3

Yea, said San Francisco's Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike, who has the habit of unconventional utterance. While he was speaking at the University of California at Berkeley, someone inevitably brought up the subject of San Francisco's famed topless dancers. Preached Pike, in the spirit of the Song of Songs: "We must always be in a position of thanksgiving to God for the beauties of his handiwork."

Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, 56, had an experience unique for a high Communist official: an audience with Pope Paul VI. The private, 45-minute encounter signaled a distinct detente between the Catholic and Communist worlds. Even five years ago, a meeting between a Pope and a Soviet foreign minister would have been unthinkable; now Gromyko and Paul were earnestly discussing peace and the dangers in Southeast Asia. After the audience, the Marxist carried away a gold medal commemorating the Ecumenical Council. But no pictures were taken to commemorate the meeting. The Vatican considers Gromyko too controversial to be seen with His Holiness.

Architect Edward Durell Stone, 64, was beaming. His former flame had a glow in her eyes. "Goodbye, Maria. Good luck," Stone whispered dramatically in New York State Supreme Court. Thus the architect parted from his wife Maria Elena Torch Stone, 37, after eleven years of marriage, the last two of which had been filled with charges and countercharges of abandonment and adultery. Now she will have custody of their two children, about $55,000 a year in alimony and the $250,000 Manhattan town house, where she will settle down to complete a fictional account of her experiences in architecture. Title (sigh): Not in Lone Splendor.

The shrewdest duffer in Buckinghamshire sized up the competition and decided: don't get licked--join him. So Britain's Prime Minister Harold Wilson, 50, who plays golf with a handicap of 18, arranged for Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, 42, to be on his side against two of 'Arold's customary golfing partners, a pair of businessmen. That was a neat stroke, since Lee, in England on an eight-day visit, handles the clubs better than almost any Prime Minister in the world. But after a half-hour's play on the Ellesborough Golf Club course near Chequers, a cloudburst doused the winning P.M.s, and soon they gave up the game.

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