The Specialist's Eye

For his 75th birthday, Poet Robert Frost received the "felicitations of the nation" from the U.S. Senate. Said Frost, who spends his spare time "puttering" about his 300-acre Vermont farm: "Twenty acres of land for every man would be the answer to all the world's problems. It would show them their burdens as well as their privileges." Being called a poet was embarrassing, Farmer Frost added. "I call myself a 'teacher' on my income tax report, but next year I'm going to put down 'resigned.' When they ask me, 'Resigned from what?' I'll say I'm resigned to everything."

At 82, Nobel Prizewinning Physicist Dr. Robert Millikan took a cheerful view. He told reporters that he was not convinced that the U.S. would ever be able to make an H bomb. Even if we could, it probably wouldn't "explode the whole earth and transform it into a nebula."

After a feverish all-night closing session of the New York legislature (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), Governor Thomas E. Dewey was presented by his staff with one red rose for each of his 48 years. He celebrated the occasion by lolling late in bed.

Just hitting his stride at 83, Maestro Arturo Toscanini was too busy to celebrate. He led the NBC Symphony in a bang-up performance of Prokofiev's Classical Symphony, paused just long enough to accept a new set of luggage from RCA and a basket of his favorite fruits from the members of the orchestra.

Visiting the U.S. for the third time, Irish-born Novelist Elizabeth (The Heat of the Day) Bowen was frankly puzzled by the literary manners of Americans. "Something that fascinates us in England and Ireland is the number of excruciatingly critical novels of American life by Americans," she said. "We have our own small social satires, but no one has really lifted the lid off one of our provincial towns . . ."

Milliner Lilly Dache announced something she called a "man hook" (a gadget of gilded metal about the size of an umbrella handle), to be worn as an innocent-looking Easter corsage. "It is large enough for the neck of a small man," Lilly explained. "I don't know what a lady does if she likes somebody like Jack Dempsey."

The Very Reverend Hewlett ("The Red Dean") Johnson let the readers of the New York Daily Worker in on a secret: "The reiterated cry . . . that Russia expands . . . is false. Russia has not expanded."

For once in his triumphant career, crafty old John L. Lewis was momentarily stumped. A Connecticut eighth-grade student, assigned to argue the negative in a debate, sent him a letter asking for expert advice. The debate's topic: "Should miners be allowed to strike?"

The Brimming Cup

In Cincinnati, the National Religion and Labor Foundation voted to give its annual Award for Social Justice to "America's foremost woman and mankind's most universally beloved friend," Eleanor Roosevelt.

Pausing in Miami on a concert tour, Sportsman Lauritz Melchior, who a year ago shot a buffalo in East Africa, was all but bowled over by his fisherman's luck (see cut).

After serving 25 years in state prison for the murder of Madge Oberholtzer, Indiana's onetime Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon David C. ("I am the law") Stephenson, 56, got out on parole.

In her old home territory, a capacity crowd of 2,572 turned out to hear Soprano Margaret Truman. Said the Kansas City Star: "She faced an audience that was musically discerning and slow to warm to her singing . . ."

Awarded to Bandleader Guy ("The sweetest music this side of heaven") Lombardo, by the American Rabbit and Coney Dealers Association: the title of Mr. Peter Cottontail of 1950.

The Beautiful People

At a London charity banquet, Princess Elizabeth, already looking every inch a queen, graciously shook hands with the leader of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition, Winston Churchill, while the Clement Attlees stood close by (see cut).

Curvaceous, blue-eyed Frances Cloyd, 24, crowned Mrs. America at Asbury Park, N.J. last September, filed suit for divorce. The "extreme cruelty" of her garage mechanic husband, her lawyer explained, has made it "impossible for her to do full duty to her [three] children and maintain the high position reached by her as the ideal mother . . ."

Francisco Franco finally set the day. On April 10, in a private chapel next to Franco's El Pardo Palace, outside Madrid, the dictator's only daughter, 23-year-old Carmen, will be married to 28-year-old Dr. Cristobal Martinez Bordiu Ortega y Bascaran, tenth Marques de Villaverde.

In Gstaad, Switzerland, the Ago Khan dropped in on daughter-in-law Rita Hayworth, expertly cuddled his three-month-old granddaughter Yasmin for the first time. "She is very pretty," the Aga said gravely. "But she has a snub nose."

The Fon of Bikom decided that outsiders had stuck their noses into his complicated family affairs once too often. The Cameroons king served notice on the U.N. Trusteeship Council that he plans to sue the newspapers that said he has 600 wives (he has only 110). Also, the Fon insisted indignantly, he is 100 years old, not 83, as reported.

California's Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas, onetime star of stage (Young Woodley, Tonight or Never) and screen (She), struck a convincing pose in chef's cap (see cut) to plug a new Agriculture Department book, Family Fare (U.S. Government Printing Office, 25-c-).

The Cost of Living

A federal grand jury in Topeka, Kans. had an unpleasant surprise for Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, publisher of the famed 10-c- Little Blue Books: an indictment for nonpayment of $65,000 in back income taxes. At a loss to explain, Haldeman-Julius guessed that the Government was after the donations--some $100,000--that admirers had sent him from time to time over a 15-year period. "I couldn't insult them, you know, so I accepted . . . You don't even have to report that kind of money."

Like a big Wall Street operator, Philosopher Will Durant lost and won back a cool $264,000 overnight. Someone broke into his home in the Hollywood hills, cracked the safe, stole a big bunch of non-negotiable stocks and bonds. When detectives found burglar and loot in a hotel room, the thief sighed with relief and said: "I was afraid someone would bump me off for it."

Cinemactress Jane Russell was firm with her financial advisers when they tried to persuade her to think of a portion of her income tax as a "charitable" contribution: "Gentlemen, I give 10% of my salary to the Church. I always will. I think God needs it more than the Government."

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