PEOPLE

"My husband was saddling the horse of a friend of Grace's," says Mrs. Donald Le Vine, explaining how she and her sister. Princess Grace of Monaco, happened to be in the saddling paddock at Garden State Park in New Jersey recently. "Grace never had too much to do with horses herself," added Mrs. Le Vine, "but Father was president of the Atlantic City racetrack, and my husband is a trainer [SI, Sept. 22], so she did get a little caught up in it." As for the friend's horse, Nash win, it didn't. It came in fourth.

"My opponent, Tom Gola, is a better basketball player than I am," said Lawyer Charles Peruto, campaigning in Philadelphia, "and he's a lot bigger and prettier than me, but is Tom Gola qualified to hold the office of city controller?" Yes, answered 329,930 Philadelphians, who voted the 36-year-old La Salle coach into the office on Election Day. Gola, a three-time All-America and onetime pro, anticipates no difficulty when he takes over his new job in the middle of the basketball season. "The road games are one-stop trips," he points out, "and practices will be late, after my office hours. Look, I did it last year." Last year Gola was a state representative. He missed one session in Harrisburg and La Salle was 23-1.

Although it isn't widely known, Dr. Max Rafferty, California's superintendent of public instruction, is something of an expert on football. Never a player (bad feet), Dr. Rafferty boasts of a 51-5 record as a high school coach and welcomes invitations to speak on the sport. Several years ago he delivered a speech at a Helms Foundation dinner entitled, "Football: The Indestructible Sport." This year he has been going around the state speaking on the 100th anniversary of college football, using much the same address, but jollying it up with such thoughts as "Kooks, crumbums and Commies [and] hairy, loudmouthed beatniks" are bent upon destroying the game, and warning that "pseudointellectuals" will ruin the fine Oregon State team. OSU activists, according to Dr. Rafferty, "look and smell like they spent 10 years in solitary confinement on Devils Island," and the university president is a "bigger ass than the players," since he set up the commission to investigate Coach Dee Andros (SI, Sept. 1). Dr. Rafferty seems to have misplaced his concern. Only last week Oregon State beat California 35-3.

"I asked for a well-broken-down horse," says Brigitte Bardot indignantly, "and instead they gave me a 3-year-old stallion that was completely loco.... He bolted, and I was so panic-stricken that I let go of the reins and held on to his mane for dear life." Which wasn't hard enough, it turned out. The horse ignored her shouts of "Stop, stop, I don't know how to gallop!" and B.B. fell off and was dragged 165 feet, cutting her hip.

Former Colt fullback Alan (The Horse) Ameche, now the vice-president of A&G Foods, has just been elected to the board of the exceedingly prestigious Philadelphia Orchestra Association; Ameche has done a great deal for the underprivileged children of Philadelphia (and Baltimore and Washington). Musically, he reports that he spends from eight to 10 hours a week listening to his collection of records and tapes on a stereo set equipped with 28 speakers, and he's a Beethoven nut. "Just a fantastic man," says Ameche. "I admire him so much I'm reading Thayer's double edition on his life and learning every detail about him." Ameche's collection, he says, "runs the whole gamut of Beethoven. I enjoy the baroque music, but everything gravitates from Beethoven. I'm big on him."

Anne Ford Uzielli had never played paddle tennis before, but there she was last week, in the semifinals of the Third Annual Southampton Platform Tennis Tournament. She and partner Merrill Lynch Magowan went on to lose, however, and in the finals Mrs. Richard Adler (wife of the songwriter) and Peter Banker (vice-president of Pan Ocean Oil) defeated Mrs. Carola Lott (assistant to Tom Hoving at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Louis Marx Jr. (son of the toy manufacturer). The weather was icky, but a good time was had by all, including Gianni Uzielli, who viewed his wife's progress to the semifinals with some alarm. "Oh, my God," he observed at one point, "if she wins we'll have to build a trophy room."

The trouble with living in the executive mansion is that it has no street number, pouts Mrs. Marvin Mandel, wife of Maryland's governor, and without a street number how do you pick the daily double? "I had to go back to our old street number in Baltimore—2 and 9," said Mrs. Mandel on opening day at Laurel. Wrong address. The winning combination was 2 and 3.

You'd think that a rich, handsome, successful fellow like Paul Newman would be satisfied. No way. It seems what Newman really wanted to be was a star athlete. "All my life I've kidded myself that I was a natural athlete," he confesses. "I wasn't much good at football. I can't ski. I'm a great man on a driving range, but I get on a golf course and I'm no damn good. I'm a lousy athlete. I can't even dance."

TWO PHOTOS