PEOPLE

Asked to issue a proclamation honoring the town's most famous citizens, Ken Boyer of the Cardinals and Clete Boyer of the Yankees, the mayor of Alba, Mo. (pop. 352) shook his head and refused on the ground that it would not be fitting. Dismayed, Alba's fans then asked the city clerk to issue the proclamation, but she also stubbornly refused. Two jealous politicians? No, two proud but modest parents. The mayor of Alba happens to be Vernon Boyer, the third basemen's dad. The city clerk: their mother, Mabel Boyer.

"The New York Giants are the only team I ever watch," said Pop Artist Pat Jensen, ostentatiously turning away from a telecast of the World Series last week. "All I care about is football." Which explains why baseball fans might find it hard to recognize the likeness of Mickey Mantle (below center) among the pop portraits currently on show at Manhattan's Amel Gallery. Giant Y. A. Tittle was easy to spot, of course, even though he looked a bit worried about his team's future. But why was Willie Shoemaker so recognizable? Could be that football fan Jensen gets out to the Big A once in a while, after all.

He has already advocated chasing your dog, racing your bike and hiking three miles a day to tune up the heart. And now Boston Heart Specialist Dr. Paul Dudley White has come up with a new cure for a tired ticker. Striding through downtown Winston-Salem, N.C. White avowed that "airlines should install bicycle machines behind the cockpit so pilots could exercise in flight. As it is, they just sit there with blood forced to their feet by gravity. Very unhealthy." Later, "invigorated" by a 20-block walk and bound for his seventh-floor hotel room, the 78-year-old Dr. White snubbed the elevators and headed for the stairs.

It was a made-to-order scenario for the top blonde of the moment. The only trouble was that it was real. Trying to get away from Portugal's snap-happy news photographers, top blonde Shirley Jones, who had just turned brunette, and British Movie Stars James Booth and Lionel Jeffries took off in a powerboat from seaside Cascais and soon found themselves in a classical box-office plight: a beautiful girl and two leading men helplessly adrift in the wind-tossed Atlantic. As the golden sun sank over lovely Lisbon and the strains of Those in Peril on the Sea began to quiver in the throats of a million mighty Wurlitzers, a soprano scream from Shirley at last attracted a rescue party, and the three landlubbers were able once again to get back to work on their latest flick.

Believe it or not, the publicity man for the Dallas Cowboys is even more accident-prone than the Cowboys themselves. Since he started to flack for them, former Duke Guard Larry Karl has been hit by a car, has sliced his toes with a power mower, has knocked out his front teeth taking one picture and twisted his knee taking another. Last week, returning home from the office, Karl slipped on a skate board and broke his jaw. This time, however, he had someone else besides football players for company in a Dallas hospital. His wife Judy had just given birth there to their sixth child (fifth son).

Down in Texas the name Murchison may mean big money, but up in Kansas it's just a name that could bounce off a check like any other. "I'm sorry, but there's too much money involved here," said a Junction City antique-car dealer as he turned down a check for $3,750 signed by one John Murchison. "I don't know enough about the signer." It took the multimillionaire part owner of the Cowboys at least two phone calls to convince the car dealer that he had enough money in the bank to pay for the shiny old 1954 Mercedes-Benz four-door convertible his wife wanted more than anything for her birthday.

If Massachusetts Governor Endicott Peabody could only connect with voters the way he does with birds, he might be running for office again. Last week in his first crack at the ancient sport of duck shooting, the political lame duck bagged his limit of waterfowl in a matter of hours. Then he downed a cock pheasant, a partridge and a brace of woodcock.

Everything went wrong for Torero-turned-movie-star El Cordobés when he dropped in on Paris for a two-day stay, partly to look at his latest portrait (by far-out U.S. Painter Harold Stevenson) and partly "because I just felt like it." First off, there were no petits pois at his favorite Montparnasse restaurant. "I always order petits pois," he said, "because I love them." Then, "Let's go see the James Bond-Goldfinger car at the automobile salon," the bullfighter suggested to a friend. Alas, Bond's $25,000 Aston Martin had just been removed from the show. Finally, the Spaniard had to rout himself out of bed for a private showing of his latest movie, The Triumph of El Cordobés, and he plainly found it not worth the effort. "I don't want to make any more bullfighting pictures," the disillusioned Cordobés said sourly. "They are usually pretty bad. Bullfighting is one thing. The cinema is another, and they shouldn't be mixed."

Where the heck was Bradley, W.W., wondered a secretary of Princeton's history department, drumming fingers on desk. As the bulletin board made clear, he was supposed to report to his adviser. Delinquent Bill Bradley, the All-America basketball player, was in Tokyo for the Olympics—as just about all of America knew.

THREE ILLUSTRATIONS