PEOPLE

The state governors were concentrating on politics for the most part at their convention in Cleveland, and only a few found time to relax. One was John Connally of Texas, who took in the harness races at Northfield Park. Another was James Rhodes of Ohio, who managed to get half a dozen fellow governors out to Municipal Stadium, where they saw the Cleveland Indians split a doubleheader with the Washington Senators. The governors' ladies were really the better sportsmen; they went off to Pepper Pike Club one day and had themselves a golf tournament. It rained for awhile and they had to huddle on the porch outside the men-only clubhouse, but when it stopped Mrs. Pat Brown of California won top honors and half a dozen golf balls with a net of 71.

Golf is the big sport with most people in show business, but Singer Johnny Mathis likes basketball. "I carry two basketballs in the trunk of my car," Mathis says. "I warm up for every record session and every nightclub performance by playing basketball. You'd be surprised what it does for the vocal cords."

Rumor said that Jackie Gleason was going to telecast his comedy show next season from Miami so that he could be on hand to campaign the kennel of racing greyhounds he was supposedly planning to buy. But the real reason for the portly comic's move to Florida is golf; he wants to play every day. He'll have a five-room suite at the Doral Country Club and an 18-hole course at his doorstep, and he is anticipating a long sunny winter of fairway weather.

"You're forced to help out yourself if your croupier doesn't turn up," explained former Middleweight Champion Terry Downes (below) as he took over a gambling table at his club in London. Along with his casino, the 28-year-old Downes owns 34 betting shops, a racehorse, a 1961 Rolls-Royce and roughly $1 million. "I still like to box," said Terry. "Otherwise I wouldn't be able to sleep at night."

Lending a touch of somewhat grimy glamour to A. J. Foyt's pit crew at the Player's 200 sports car race at Mosport, Ontario was singer Keely Smith. Keely's presence pleased the crowd of 52,224, but she couldn't do much for Foyt's Scarab, which broke down. He had to abandon the race.

Joseph Louis Barrow Jr., whose father, Joe Louis, was born in a one-story farmhouse in an Alabama cotton field and never got through high school, graduated from the exclusive (scholastically and financially) University High School on the campus of the University of Chicago. The old heavyweight champion's son plans to attend Boston University because, "I like Boston. It is a very cultural city, and it has tremendous college facilities."

Heard nightly over the public-address system at Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine is Pitcher Don Drysdale's fast-selling recording of Our Love. "Sometimes," says the best right-handed singer in the National League, "I don't even notice it."

The youngest of his acting and singing family, 24-year-old recording star Ricky Nelson, a black-belt man in karate, an excellent surfer and once the fifth-ranked 15-and-under tennis player in the state of California, has a new pastime—bicycles. For their first wedding anniversary, he and his wife Kris exchanged "stingrays," little bikes with small wheels and big handlebars. "I also bought a track bike and a unicycle," said Ricky, "but I still have not mastered the fine art of going backwards on the unicycle."

After 14 years of playing golf, Dr. Norman Topping, president of the University of Southern California, scored his first hole in one when he aced the 145-yard second hole at the California Country-Club in Whittier with a five-wood. Score another one for brains over brawn. Topping's playing partner in their foursome, USC football coach John McKay, needed a plain ordinary old par 3 to get from tee to cup.

Tenor Lauritz Melchior, 74, packed his guns, kissed his brand-new bride goodby and flew off to arctic Norway. Walter O'Malley, hearing that the polar bears were running, left the problem of the Dodgers' woeful hitting to his subordinates and joined his friend the opera singer on his safari to the snow country.

Delaware's Attorney General David P. Buckson had to forgo driving his crack pacer Coldwell Kid at Liberty Bell Park in Philadelphia in order to stay home in Delaware and file entry in another race—the one next November for governor of the state. Even with a substitute driver sitting in the sulky, the 5-year-old Kid came steaming home first to win $1,400 for his Republican owner's gubernatorial campaign fund.

PHOTO