PEOPLE

He crooned Wish You Were Here, and somebody at Las Vegas' Desert Inn thrust $1,000 into his outstretched hands. Then Eddie Fisher burbled Around the World and another grand was forced upon him. Sounded like the jaded gambling crowd had gone berserk over a flesh-and-blood jukebox, but the facts were less bizarre. Eddie is chairman of the Olympic Entertainment Committee and was simply encouraging the casino sports to cough up funds for the U.S. team in Tokyo.

Suddenly it wasn't a referee but an Internal Revenue agent blowing the whistle in Green Bay. Packer Halfback Paul Hornung, he said, was shy $3,163.76 in taxes for 1962, the year Hornung got racked up for betting on Packer games. Any connection? "No," said Paul, "none at all. We just have a problem with the Government. I guess a lot of people do."

Having seen the humiliation of his English brethren at Newport, Australian Press Lord Sir Frank Packer manfully dropped by the frosty New York Yacht Club to hand over a two-foot model of his Gretel, the short-ender of the 1962 America's Cup campaign. But as Gretel was laid to rest in a glass box, the rich sailor passed the word he was challenging again for 1967. And if he should win, said Sir Frank, woe be unto the Americans. "When we take over, we'll require that every hull be lined with kangaroo skin." Somebody tittered. "One other thing," said Big Daddy Packer. "You won't be allowed to use our kangaroos."

Back home in Australia, Olympic Swimmer Dawn Eraser generally was considered too dedicated to her sport to have any time for permanent love affairs. And for the sake of world records, her countrymen hoped she would stay that way. Then last week, after a two-month courtship, Dawn and a Queensland bookmaker announced their engagement. Before jetting to Japan, Dawn reassured the gaping faces left behind: "Swimming and romance go hand in hand."

Yawing into the curve at Santa Barbara raceway at 120 mph, Nick Reynolds and his Lotus 22 picked up an oil patch and rode it straight into the piled up hay bales. For a minute there it looked like the Kingston Trio was down to two. But the road-racing folk singer was saving no sad songs for himself; he shook himself and pronounced the smashup "routine." Quite a routine. Seven stitches in his chin: $1,500 in wrinkles in the once streamlined Lotus.

Casting judicious eyes over the scene, Supreme Court Justice Hugo LaFayette Black (left) sat in the gallery at the Davis Cup matches in Cleveland and from his expression found the Americans' defense of the title well executed while it lasted. Mr. Justice Black is qualified to make such judgments for he is every bit as much at home in white tennis shorts and sneakers as he is in his long black robe. At 78, he may be found any morning the sun is shining out behind his home in Alexandria, Va., vigorously practicing against a mechanical ball boy.

What Charles O. Finley lacks in good fortune he seems to make up in bad luck. Nobody comes out to see his Kansas City Athletics lose ball games, the commissioner won't let him use orange baseballs and green bats, the city councilmen won't let him shoot fireworks after he wins, and the other American League owners won't let him leave town. Now Finley has endured the ultimate disaster. For a benefit he hired the Beatles for $150,000, and even they could not draw a profit-making crowd to Municipal Stadium. But, despite a stunning $70,000 deficit, Finley imperturbably donated $25,000 to a local children's hospital.

The only reason they were together in Los Angeles was to glamorize young John V. Tunney's campaign for Congress, but old Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey couldn't stick to the subject. It was 37 years to the week since the long count had kept Tunney in business as the heavyweight champion, and that incident was vividly remembered even though Dempsey kept insisting, "All that stuff is forgotten. I learned that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, and I joined the Tunney family years ago." Responded Gene in the same coin: "Time has proved Jack Dempsey the greatest fighter of the century. Nobody was—or is—close to him."

The job has no future, and at $1.95 a day and carfare the pay isn't much of an attraction, but Nobuhiko Higashikuni, one of the grandsons of Emperor Hirohito, signed on anyway. Along with 500 other Japanese youths, he will wait table and help feed the athletic chowhounds in Tokyo's Olympic Village dining rooms. "Serving the athletes, I will do my best to serve international friendship," explained the 19-year-old law student.

Surely the silver-templed old master of the third-down clutch play deserved to have it easy under the leisure of retirement and the management of his cotton farm in Clarksdale (pop. 16,500), Miss. Trouble is, two years among the boll weevils down by the Sunflower River proved a drag for the ex-Giant quarterback, and the man who used to electrify New Yorkers with his sang froid said plaintively: "I had to do something." And with that he opened up Charles Conerly Name Brand Discount Shoe Store, Inc. and smiled and hoped for the best (below).

TWO PHOTOS