PEOPLE

Nature is imitating Art again, that is if you can believe Actor Gardner McKay's old TV show Adventures in Paradise was Art. On that program McKay cruised the South Pacific waters being heroic, and recently it stood him and four young men in good stead. McKay, in Hawaii to make a film, was sailing the 55-foot cutter Eolo into Honolulu Yacht Harbor when he spotted four teen-agers struggling against a 10-foot surf at the entrance to the rocky channel. Unable to bring the cutter about, McKay docked it hastily and borrowed a 20-foot runabout. He headed back and scooped up the four boys, who were by that time almost helpless. "I've been doing things like this for years," McKay said with a becoming lack of modesty. "It was just like on TV."

Brigitte Bardot ought to know by now that she cannot sunbathe privately anywhere except perhaps at the bottom of a mine shaft, but a photographer caught her again recently and again Brigitte is suing. She was sunning herself by her swimming pool in Rome and Brigitte, sans top, and husband Gunther Sachs, sans everything, were snapped by a papparazzo with a telephoto lens. The pictures were published in an Italian magazine and Brigitte, fuming, brought suit claiming invasion of privacy. The photographer, she said, "has acted not only without receiving authorization from me and my husband, but even cut a hole in the dense vegetation surrounding the swimming pool and the villa!" She added that the pictures had "no other aim except that of arousing the morbid curiosity of the public." Oh, come now, Brigitte: surely not the morbid curiosity of the public.

During ceremonies before the Mets' Oldtimers (average age 34½) tottered out onto the field at Shea Stadium last week for their exercise in nostalgia against the 1960 Yankees, Met Rod Kanehl trod upon the skirt of usherette Alyanne Morante (below). There have been sneers because the bit of byplay was set up in advance, but we consider it a triumph. Hot Rod Kanehl pulled Alyanne's skirt off on purpose! Any Met could have done it by mistake.

One of the women's magazines reports that the California hostess, to be really in, must snag Sandy Koufax for her dinner parties. "The status guest is Sandy Koufax," writes Lyn Tornabene in the current Ladies' Home Journal. "None other compares, but Don Drysdale makes a nice second choice. If you can't get either, try for a basketball player or Bishop James Pike." If even the Bishop can't make it, presumably the California hostess calls the whole thing off and sends out for pizza.

Bill Wambsganss' unassisted triple play in 1920 was nothing compared to the recent Boyer-to-Buchek-to-Kranepool job. The former just took skill; the latter took, among other things, almost $40,000, a 75-man movie crew and the cooperation of the Screen Actors Guild and Harry-Walker. Paramount is filming The Odd Couple with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. Matthau plays a sportswriter separated from his wife; he is rooming with a friend, Lemmon, an ashtray-emptying nut who calls Matthau in the press box with the urgent message that he is not to eat any frankfurters, because they are having frankfurters for dinner. During the call, Matthau misses a Met triple play against the Pirates. Paramount, not finding it feasible to employ enough extras to fill Shea Stadium or spend 20 years training child actors to play ball, had to shoot real Mets, Pirates and fans. They had just one half hour before the game at Shea, and, the way things were shaping up, Matthau's bet that they would not get it in a single take seemed like conservative pessimism indeed. Roberto Clemente, who was to hit into the triple, huffed out, offended at the mere $100 Paramount would pay. Maury Wills had to refuse to run bases—his agent advised him he might be in union trouble because of his off-season show-business career. When Harry Walker learned that hall an hour of batting practice was to be given up to thespian endeavors, the Pirate manager screamed, "The hell with that. My team needs the batting practice. "Bill Mazeroski finally replaced Clemente, Donn Clendenon replaced Wills and Mazeroski got up, hit a couple of accidentally successful line drives and then hit neatly into the Boyer-to-Buchek-to-Kranepool triple play as Matthau stood with his back to the whole thing, discussing frankfurters.

The commoner husband of Crown Princess Beatrix of The Netherlands is now Prince Claus, and as such he apparently has a few princely habits to acquire. One of them is horseback riding. For months now Claus has been secretly tutored by the Queen's equerry in a small arena in Queen Juliana's stables. Claus is 40, and 40 is a little late to have to learn to sit prancing stallions, so he has been working out with a small ladies' horse named Lightfoot, ridden until recently by the equerry's wife. For all of Lightfoot's size and gentleness, Claus was still having a tough time mounting last week (above), but once up he managed a small and mercifully uneventful trot along the beach outside The Hague. "He is a fast pupil, but he will never become a jumping champion like his father-in-law Prince Bernhard," observed a member of the stable personnel.

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