PEOPLE
Jacqueline Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis were on a great many minds last week, and horseplayers at New York's Belmont Park could have turned the preoccupation to good account. The unexpected winner of the last race on Wednesday, Oct. 23, paying $102.80, was a horse named Kentucky Folk. Kentucky Folk is out of Chic Greek, and Chic Greek's sire just happens to have been Greek Ship.
With all the sedentary types around who would be perfectly happy to sit for 11 days, it seems somehow too bad that only vigorous, athletic men are being cooped up in space ships. Astronaut Wally Schirra is a water skier and a lover of fast cars, Walter Cunningham is a handball player who barely escaped breaking his neck working out on the trampoline, and Donn Eisele was a runner in high school. He still runs for exercise, and it is more exercise these days than it used to be. He carries his 95-pound wife.
"I hope this does not mean that I must give up drinking," observed M. Bernard Cambournac upon the occasion of his being made a blood brother of the Blood Indians last week. It would have been awkward—Cambournac is executive vice-president of Pernod, and was in Canada for the annual Pernod-sponsored pheasant shoot. The hunt was held this year in America rather than Eastern Europe, and 191 French hunters flew 5,000 miles to bag 169 pheasants, 117 grouse, 30 ducks, 59 jack-rabbits and one porcupine. That many hunters make up quite a large shooting party. The line stretched well over a mile, and with 190 competitors, each man moved out so briskly for a shot at the birds that the party, in 45 minutes, had gone through fields expected to take them two hours. Pierre Bauch, the French manager and director of Colgate-Palmolive, said, "It was a very wonderful hunt. The birds were certainly there, and any hunter who did not get his share had only himself to blame." As for his share, when asked, Bauch said, "How many were we allowed?" and, given the answer, he said, "Oh. Then maybe I will not say anything."
The Tigers' Mickey Lolich has found things more congenial around the Detroit air base than have some other sergeants in the Michigan Air National Guard who neglected to win three games in the World Series. The base was temporarily renamed in his honor, he got to lounge about in the commanding general's office and smoke the commanding general's cigars, and for one full year he has been declared exempt from KP.
Who better to review The Great White Hope—the Broadway play based on the life of Jack Johnson—than that ex-heavyweight champion and Shakespeare enthusiast Gene Tunney? "I thought it was terrifically dramatic," Mr. Tunney reports. "It is excellent theater, and James Earl Jones [who plays "Jack Jefferson"] is extraordinary. There is a resemblance to Johnson in his early days. He did look boyish in his pictures." As for Jones's technique as Johnson, Tunney says of it, "Even professional boxers would be pleased with his performance. He hits the bag pretty well and with some knowledge. He didn't do any fighting, of course, except for a bit with his wife. That," said Mr. Tunney, with more chivalry than dramatic sense or domestic insight, "could have been left out."
In one of the memorable TV appearances of all time, News Commentator Lowell Thomas once turned the program This Is Your Life into a rout. Insensible to the particular honor being paid him, he refrained from weeping with nostalgia as His Life passed before him. When M.C. Ralph Edwards said, "I am sure you are going to be happy as your life goes by," Thomas answered frostily, "I doubt that very much," after which it was downhill all the way. Well, last week Thomas received a tribute somewhat more to his taste. He was guest of honor at the Ski Ball in the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. The $50-a-ticket function was sold out, and more than $60.000 was raised to support the U.S. ski team. The entire team was present, having converged from all over the country, as had many of its supporters, and the 76-year-old Thomas was saluted for his own fund-raising efforts over many years. On this occasion he was not only appreciative, he was resplendent. He broke out a gold brocade dinner jacket with black sleeves and was able to say, with conviction, "Thank you."
That conservative observer of the American scene, William F. Buckley, is something of a sportsman, but his public is to be forgiven if it suspects that the muscles he exercises most are those which raise his eyebrows. His brother James, candidate for the Senate from New-York, confines his athletic endeavors to leisurely walks in the woods. This leaves the sports pretty much up to Mrs. James Buckley, which is all right with her. She skis, plays tennis and shoots golf in the 90s or better. When, a bit ago, she said bleakly, "It was a crushing defeat," she spoke of nothing political. The Sharon, Conn. Mothers' Field Hockey Team had dropped its opening game 4-0.
TWO PHOTOS
