PEOPLE
Dressed up in Santa Claus whiskers and fur coats, Floyd Patterson and his old sparring partner, Ingemar Johansson, fought a rematch—Indian wrestling, this time—on a Stockholm TV show whose audience is challenged to guess the real identity of the principals. Once again Ingo hit the deck, but in a subsequent Swedish-style contest, Johansson turned on his fiercest toonder-and-lightning scowl and wrestled a peg away from Floyd. The prize divided by the battlers who used to command a half a million dollars a crack: four stuffed animals for Patterson, one stuffed animal for Ingemar.
Governor Edmund G. (Pat) Brown (at right, below) has always opposed the death penalty for humans, but not for ducks and geese. Hunting on the Wallace Lynn ranch north of Sacramento with his old friend, Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Governor happily announced: "I didn't commute anybody, and I enjoyed myself immensely." The total bag: 12 birds each.
With deer-meat sausage on the breakfast menu for visiting German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, President Lyndon Johnson set out to shoot the makings in the bush back of his LBJ ranch. But every time the presidential sights settled on a deer, out popped a covey of worried staffers and away went the quarry. Exasperated after missing six shots in a row, President Johnson ordered his doctor back to the ranch house and threatened to blow out the front tire of a carload of Secret Service agents. Then, alone at last, he bagged a 100-pound buck, with a single shot at 300 feet.
"I got so badly bunged up I had to quit after three games," said Novelist Erskine Caldwell, as he reminisced recently about his inglorious career as a professional football player in Wilkes-Barre 40 years ago. The author of God's Little Acre and Tobacco Road has had better luck indoors. "I'm much more successful," he said, "in the athletic career I've since taken up. I'm now a pool shark."
Whether or not he himself makes it in the race for the presidency, the family of Pennsylvania's Governor William Scranton will be in fast company during 1964. Once the auto season gets under way, the governor's nephew, Yale grad Timmy Mayer, will take the wheel as No. 2 man on the British Cooper Grand Prix auto team.
The U.S. Government claims it is a hobby, but Wilmington Banker William (Willie) du Pont Jr. insists just as stoutly that his 7,025-acre stud farm and steeplechase course, Fair Hill (site of the annual Fox-catcher chase), is a business. For this reason, says Willie, who admits to the hobby of steeplechase-course designing, the government should give him back that $32,000 in taxes he paid on the farm under protest when it was losing money. Well, if it's all business, said the government, what about those two professional fox hunters whose $8,000 salaries were deducted? Oh, them, said Willie's lawyers, as the case turned into the stretch last week—well, we'll forget about their salaries if you forget about the rest of the tax.
Life has been peaches, cream and a heaping bowl of Wheaties for the Rev. Robert Richards ever since he gave up pole vaulting in 1957 and started to sell breakfast food. But now—despite the fact that he has not bothered to vote since 1954—Parson Bob's friends are urging him to give up his $100,000-a-year income and start running again, this time as a G.O.P. candidate for Senator. There was only one hurdle in the way: anyone running for office in California is required to register with the party of his choice at least three months before March 20. Parson Bob, who has been both a Republican and a Democrat in his time, cleared it by just three days.
"I have lots to learn," sighed Queen Elizabeth's first cousin, Prince Michael of Kent, as he strove in vain to get a berth on the 11th Hussar regimental ski team for the British army championships. Despite the fact that his mother, the Duchess of Kent, was awarding the trophy, the best the prince could get was a first reserve. "For Mother's sake," Prince Michael said when the team leader told him he might do better next year, "I hope so."
University of Texas sophomore Lynda Bird Johnson was the proudest coed in the land when the Associated Press selected her to present the National Football Championship trophy to the players of the undefeated Texas team. "I haven't been in such good company in a long time," said the President's oldest daughter. But Coach Darrell Royal was in no mood for speechifying. "O.K.," he told his ogling Longhorns when the ceremony was done, "let's get back to practice."
PHOTO
JAMES WELDEN
