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PEOPLE
Governor Pat (Skinny) Brown of California pitted his 190 pounds (conservative estimate) against blonde, slender ex-Olympian Muriel Davis Grossfeld in a push-up contest (below) when Mrs. Grossfeld visited his office during a Campbell Soup Company-sponsored tour to interest teen-age girls in physical fitness. Mrs. Grossfeld did four quick push-ups. Brown did, too. His tie popped out. He got up. "I haven't done this in a long time," he said, his face the color of tomato soup.
Tommy Mason, the Minnesota Vikings' best ballcarrier, relaxed in a small apartment near the Carolina Yacht Club, examining his bare feet and petting a four-foot-long iguana. Prospective prosperity is always relaxing. "Two friends and I have bought this sugarcane property in British Honduras," he said. "I just got back, and we figure if we can get proper machinery we can gross $2 million a year." The iguana? Mason brought four of the reprehensible-repped reptiles back for a very specific purpose. "First thing I do now is crate one up and ship it to the Dutchman," he snickered. Viking Coach Norm Van Brocklin's gonna be surprised when he opens that crate. "Let's welcome the Mets back to town with a real Mets parade," suggested Actor Eli Wallach. "We'll march the wrong way down a one-way street." The suggestion was offered in scorn, not luv, for Wallach is a disgruntled Dodger fan: "It hasn't been the same since Brooklyn left Brooklyn." Has Wallach seen the Mets or does he plan to? "Never!"
French skiers Christine and Marielle Goitschel and Christine Terraillon vacationed in Hawaii after their U.S. tour. While sister Christine, who was awed by the size of the Pacific waves, sunned on the beach, the other two spent the daylight hours learning to surf off Waikiki. Said Marielle, "There is much similarity between skiing and surfing, particularly in maintaining equilibrium. But skiing is much less tiring. You don't use your arms so much." What the three were all using by their last day was University of Hawaii T shirts. Sunburned sore, they discovered that the tropical Hawaiian sun was a bit too hot for their liking.
Former Olympic silver-medal broad jumper Dr. Meredith (Flash) Gourdine, now an engineering physicist in New Jersey, has a revolutionary process that causes factory smoke to purify itself. Based on a highly secret method of converting heat directly into electrical energy, the process—80% cheaper than present systems—uses electricity generated from the hot smoke to magnetize the chimney. Impurities then stick to the stack. And the method can be applied to automobile exhausts, or even to cigars or cigarettes. "I think I could make a holder that would take so much out of cigarette smoke that it might be almost tasteless," says Dr. Gourdine, thoughtlessly hurling a real challenge at Madison Avenue. Mild, baby? Man, these are really mild.
Lyndon Johnson watched the first ball game played in Houston's domed stadium from Owner Roy Hofheinz's two-story "box" and, like everyone else, was impressed. But, although the bathroom fixtures may be sprayed with gold Velvatex and the living room may boast a gold dragon, though the sauna may be complete in every detail, the box is still 340 feet from home plate. Lady Bird had to watch the game through binoculars.
That Irvine Warburton who won an Oscar for Best Film Editing for Mary Poppins was Cotton Warburton, all-time USC football immortal and an All-America in 1933. Then and now Cotton could cut.
The first man to test the giant slalom course at the National Alpine Championships at Crystal Mountain, Wash. was Governor Daniel Jackson Evans. Before he made the run, Dan Evans said he 1) was terrified by the idea, 2) wanted to try it anyway and 3) expected a spectacular spill. When Evans looked down the 83-gate, 2,400-foot-drop men's course, he prudently decided to go down the somewhat shorter women's course instead. Even so, the governor had two titanic founderings. But each time he got up, and finally he finished, a minute and a half slower than the eventual ladies' winner, Nancy Greene.
Sir Stanley Matthews, age 50, Britain's knighted soccer hero, plays his last game on April 25. Not unsurprisingly, since Matthews has been to soccer what Musial was to baseball, Prince Philip intends to be there to watch him. With him in the royal box will be a man unknown to the spectating thousands—Richard Wynn, a Toronto chiropractor who has been credited with saving Matthews' career. Three years ago Matthews, his aging body aching, was in Canada, playing exhibitions and looking as if each game might be his last. Wynn performed whatever magic chiropractors perform, and Matthews was soon playing full speed, and as well as ever.
Dr. Jerrold Zacharias, prominent MIT physicist, told an education writers' seminar, "For physics teachers, if you give me my pick between a football coach who really likes kids and a stuffed owl with a Ph.D, I'll take the football coach every time. He cares, and he'll learn as he goes." The result of the opposite choice, Dr. Zacharias complained, is that "our schools have been set up to produce a sea of uniform mice."
Mrs. Clint Murchison Jr., who had been shopping around for a lead for a benefit play, was delighted to discover that one of her husband's quarterbacks once won a high school acting contest. Quick as you could say, "Curtain," the former Barrymore of Mount Vernon, Texas—Don Meredith—was installed as leading man in 20th Century, presented at the Dallas Theater Center. "Show biz is in my blood," said Meredith. "Besides, Mrs. Murchison insisted." Meredith is wisely keeping it secret that he also won a high school contest for writing poetry.
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