PEOPLE
A little more than a year ago we reported that Y. A. Tittle and his partner, Ray Handley, a former Stanford football star, had filed suit against the lessee of the Hip Hugger, a bar they owned in Sunnyvale, Calif.; they were scandalized at their tenants' employing three topless dancers. For those of you who have been wondering how it all turned out, the bar now employs 25 topless dancers and one blonde who dances topless and bottomless.
Kentucky's Governor Louie B. Nunn has had what he thinks is a great idea—to present President Nixon and each of the nation's 31 Republican governors with a genuine, live Thoroughbred racehorse at Derby time. "In his mind he sees a picture in every paper in the country of the President and each governor posing with his horse on Derby day," says Nunn's press secretary, Larry Van Hoose. "He's very serious about it." He had better be. It isn't going to be easy. So far Kentucky breeders aren't leaping at the chance to give away all this horseflesh, and the Republican governors are already looking said gift horseflesh in the mouth. Delaware's Governor Russell W. Peterson has announced, politely, "We'll cope with the horse if the situation arises," and a spokesman for Richard Ogilvie of Illinois has reported, also politely, that the governor "frankly wouldn't have much use for a racehorse on a day-to-day basis." An aide to John R. Williams of Arizona was more forthright. "Nunn must be kidding," he said. "How would he like to receive 800 tons of unrefined copper ore?"
Like the governor, Kim Novak is also having horse trouble or, more accurately, people trouble. It began when she undertook to move her Arabian gelding, Azeum Couri, to the 1.9 acres she owns in Big Sur. She checked the project out with her neighbors, who first told her O.K. but then reversed themselves on the grounds that the horse would smell and attract flies. Kim's appeal for a permit was denied. "All I wanted to do was bring him here for the summer," she said when informed of the decision. "I don't want to stable him. He would find out that people like my neighbors say one thing and do another. Azeum would learn to mistrust people."
Dr. D. Kenneth Baker, acting president of St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., zoomed out onto the ice recently and scored a hat trick to help his team (Administration) tie the opposition (Faculty) 4-4. The game was part of "Involvement '69," a project at St. Lawrence, which has to be the strongest argument yet for student power. The kids there have undertaken to raise $10,000 and have talked three other groups into matching it, the $40,000 to be added to a $50,000 Ford grant for bettering the lot of the faculty! Concerned because wealthier institutions are luring away their professors, the students want to finance travel, research—anything whatever that broadens the faculty's professional scope. Perhaps Dr. Baker was inspired by this cause. When asked where he first played hockey he replied, "Oh, I had never played before."
"It has nothing to do with football. I'm not going to tell you what it's about, even if you keep asking," said the Jets' split end, George Sauer, firmly, when asked about the novel that he is writing. "It is not yet finished. In fact, it isn't very well started. Right now the best thing I do is roll up paper and throw it in the wastebasket." Spoken like a writer, George.
Merlin Olsen and Roman Gabriel are about to burst upon the moviegoing public in a film called The Undefeated (which the Rams last season were not). The boys will make their cinematic debut in the distinguished company of Rock Hudson, John Wayne and, a press release assures us, "every horse within 150 miles of Durango." Gabriel plays Blue Boy, a Cherokee adopted as an infant by John Wayne, and Olsen portrays Big George, "a muscular blacksmith and formidable free-for-all fighter." The part of Big George, muscular blacksmith, is smaller than that of Blue Boy, so Olsen had time in Durango to finish writing the thesis for his master's degree from Utah State. It is entitled, "A History and Economic Analysis of the World Sugar Crisis of 1963-64."
The Vancouver Canucks of the Western Hockey League have been struggling for years to get into the NHL, and they lost out again when the NHL governors refused the Oakland Seals permission to sell their charter to Vancouver. It went instead to a group that includes Northrup and Seymour Knox III of Buffalo (SI, March 10). When Seymour arrived in Vancouver to play in the Grant Trophy doubles, the U.S.-Canada squash competition, he murmured, "I don't expect that I'm very popular here." He probably was right, and it couldn't have helped that he then teamed up with Steve Gurney to defeat Canada's Lorne Main and Dave Foster 15-9, 15-10, 15-12 as the U.S. won the match 4-3.
TWO PHOTOS