The Lowdown

Winston Churchill's advice to Conservatives leaving for the U.S.: "When you get there you have to forget this Socialist Government of Great Britain. It is the government of Great Britain, and you do not criticize it. But when you get back, you make up for lost time." Author-Orator Churchill will also have something to say in the twelfth edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, due in November--60 entries on his debut (Franklin Roosevelt's total will rise from 12 to 34).

Philosopher George Santayana's judgment, at 84, of the human race: "There are no great men today."

Well-turned Aquactress Esther Williams put on a well-cut swimsuit and won coast-to-coast publicity with a denunciation of the midget-size swimsuit: "Why, they come off in the water. If you can't swim in them, what good are they?"

William Waldorf Astor's lowdown on his mother, Lady Astor: "Mother likes to insult people and goad them, but if she finds they pay no attention or simply don't get angry, she stops it."

Ferenc Molnar's reaction, at 70, to the successful Broadway revival of his 21-year-old The Play's the Thing: "I'm grateful and fatherly and all that, but something of me has vanished with the times . . . Who cares about comedies and dramas when all day long . . . you hear and read about nothing but a sorely troubled world?"

W.C.T.U. President Mrs. D. Leigh Colvin's view of hard liquor as a political menace: "Drink ... is the first step away from religion, and atheists are the most likely to become Communists."

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright's advice to 500 members and guests of Chicago's Art Directors Club, in annual meeting: "The first thing you should do is forget that you're artists . . . you're only the hands of the machine and you know there's nothing in America that can stand up against the machine. If you were 'Art Directors' . . . you would put the machine in its place . . . You all use your work for comfort. There's no beauty or truth in it ... What is there you really reverence? ... Is there anything in God's name you wouldn't exploit?"

The Old Gang

Adolf Hitler was dead again, a week after a refugee reported seeing him in Silesia (with a triangular mustache). His onetime dentist said, after studying a dental journal, that he was practically positive the Russians had Hitler's jawbone in custody.

Gilda Gray, whose beaded shimmy-dancing startled a lot of people in the '20s, startled Sterling, Colo. The assistant principal of the high school invited her to a school dance at the Elks Club and promptly got holy Ned. The board of education demanded that he break the date, explained that it "didn't think the invitation . . . was quite the thing." Miss Gray, who has been holding still for some time now, in retirement on a ranch, took it gracefully. "If the people of Sterling don't want to be educated," she said, "it's all right with me." The assistant principal wound up by taking her anyway.

In Hollywood, the late Rudolph Valentino was guest of honor at a seance. Some 30 mediums chatted with him while reporters strained in vain to hear. At the guest of honor's request, the mediums said, they sang The Sheik of Araby.

Just Deserts

To General Lucius D. Clay went the honor, privilege, and, indeed, duty of opening Berlin's baseball season. He reared back and made history in throw-ing-out-the-first-ball circles by really pitching it.

To Poetess Genevieve Taggard, 53, a standard anthology-classic for the past 20 years, went a $1,000 grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters and its American Academy.

To Prince Carl Gustaf of Sweden, who was beginning to need a haircut, went the princely privileges and appurtenances of a birthday, plus the usual obligation to blow out all the candles--in his case, a cinch.

For his humanitarian services, Herbert Hoover, national chairman of the Boys' Clubs of America, got the Golden Keystone Award, from the Boys' Clubs of America.

Argentina's President Juan Peron and wife Eva inched closer to immortality: the town fathers of 223-year-old Rosario voted to make Rosario a twin-city, half to be called Peronia, half Evia.

To Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey, leonine best-selling student of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (now studying the human female), the Indiana University chapter of Sigma Delta Chi awarded its annual leather medal to the faculty-member-reflecting-the-most-glory-on-the-school.

On Again, Off Again

Michael-&-Anne had a busy week in the rumor mill. Michael was in Lausanne, Anne in Copenhagen. The talk in Lausanne was that the wedding had been postponed indefinitely because of the "conflict between religion and politics."* The London correspondent for the New York Daily News flatly declared that Anne would renounce the Catholic Church and that wedding plans were proceeding. Michael's aide "could not confirm or deny" anything. In Copenhagen, Anne refused to answer her telephone, and friends hinted that maybe Michael was quietly easing out of the whole thing.

The Netherlands' Wilhelmina, 67, whose infirmities forced her to turn her duties over to Juliana for seven weeks last fall, turned them over again.

Princess Elizabeth, after a little spell of quiet, was suddenly dashing off in all directions. She and Philip went to their first public dance since they were married, and stayed till 1:45-Next day she opened a health exhibition and chatted with an eight-foot robot (who was unable to bow, but gave her a large wink). That night, with the rest of the family, she attended the premiere of Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (see CINEMA). This week she would be in Paris. In preparation for her visit, la ville lumiere was reported turning the lights down just a shade: being whisked out of sight, on order of the police, were all the sexier publications and nakeder postcards.

*Michael, aware that by old Rumanian law the king must be of Greek Orthodox faith, has steadfastly refused to become a Roman Catholic.

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