Monday, Jan. 31, 1955

Names make news. Last week these names made this news: Italian movie reporters, holding their annual banquet for film luminaries in Rome's Grand Hotel, succeeded in plunging some of the glamorous guests, cinemactresses from many nations, into a pleasantly informal rivalry over the matter of whose neckline plunged deepest.

Among the exhibits: the U.S.'s busty Rhonda Fleming, Italy's chesty Silvana Pampanim, Greece's buxom Irene Pappas and France's bosomy Corinne Calvet.

In the Capitol, identical resolutions were introduced in the House and Senate to authorize the White House to confer on five-star General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, 75 this week, the six-star honorary title of "General of the Armies of the United States." Only American so honored previously: John J. ("Black Jack") Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I* With nothing to lose, throneless, jobless ex-King Peter of Yugoslavia told some London newsmen that his ex-realm's Marshal Tito will be tossed out of power by 1975 (when Tito will be an oustable 84). Said Peter, who is planning to make a U.S. lecture tour this fall: "He is having quite a lot of trouble now with his own boys (TIME, Jan. 3). I don't think anybody likes him very much. Since Stalin's death we have seen him going back toward Moscow." Returning to Rio de Janeiro after inaugurating a big power project, Brazil's witty President Cafe Filho (TIME, Dec. 6) stopped off for a look at a cocoa plantation and suddenly found himself hotfooting it across a field just a few horn's-breadths ahead of a bull that had escaped from a pen. No matador, Cafe Filho, with aides puffing along in his wake, was the first to make it to the safety of a nearby hut. The runner-up was his military adviser, General Juarez Tavora. After the snorting bull was lassoed, Sprinter Cafe Filho. still gasping for breath, grinned: "I defended myself heroically, but I ran like a damned man!"

When Spain's Civil War was waning in 1938, famed Spanish Cellist Pablo Casals moved just across the Pyrenees into France, vowed that he would not return to his homeland so long as it remained in the grip of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. But last week aged (78) Musician Casals sadly broke his self-exile, went back to his birthplace, the little Spanish village of Vendrell. After he had buried his longtime friend and housekeeper, Francisca Capdevila, in Vendrell's tiny cemetery, lonely Pablo Casals once again turned his back on his homeland, again crossed the mountains.

One of Washington's staunchest bachelors, new House Speaker Sam Rayburn, 63, made a date with his youngest sister, Lucinda Rayburn, gallantly helped her into a fur wrap before they headed for the White House, where Texas-Democrat Rayburn was the President's dinner guest of honor.

Ill-matched fellow travelers of the week: unflaggingly anti-Communist Publisher William Randolph Hearst Jr. and Soviet Ambassador to the U.S. Georgy N. Zarubin, both bound for Moscow. The two flew on a Pan American World Airways plane from New York to Paris, then proceeded separately after each indignantly denied that he knew the other was to be a flight buddy at take-off time.

In his Washington home, Wisconsin's unmusical Senator Joseph McCarthy, pointedly omitted from the guest lists of two White House dinners last week (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), happily dawdled with a new toy: a fancy electric organ which his handsome wife Jean gave him for Christmas. After a few lessons, he had already learned how to pick out one tune. The song: Old Black Joe,

The Chicago Tribune's ebullient publisher, Colonel Robert R. ("Bertie") McCormick, 74, left his annual hibernation in Florida with pains in his nether regions, was reported out of the hospital and doing fine in Chicago after surgery for abdominal adhesions.

Lawyer Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., thumbed down by voters in his run for Attorney General of New York last November, popped up in Miami, summoned newsmen to his $175-a-day hotel suite and announced a grand business venture. As board chairman of Base Metals Mining Corp., Ltd., Roosevelt was on his way to Jamaica, where he claims his company has sewed up oil rights on the whole island, and will soon hopefully drill his first well.

Cinemactor Sonny Tufts, accused last year of biting a Hollywood dancer in the thigh (she later dropped her $25,000 suit against him), shelled out $600 to settle a brand-new $26,000 claim against him.

Pertinent details: another Hollywood dancer, another thigh, same teeth.

* Early in 1799, Congress, intending to promote Lieut. General George Washington, created the General of the Armies rank, but he died nine months later, not upgraded. Congress has since neglected to promote him posthumously.

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