PEOPLE
Last month the Lions Club in Copenhagen asked 106 of the city's more famous residents to do paintings which the club could exhibit in the town hall and then auction off for charity. Tennis star Torben Ulrich as usual went all—or at least way—out. He covered the walls and floor of a room in his tennis club with plastic and proceeded to smash tennis balls dipped in paint onto a 6½-foot by 3-foot canvas. "The paint," he reported, "exploded beautifully!" His wife and some friends helped dip the balls, and a photographer video-taped the process. When it was over, Ulrich cut a square in one coiner of the canvas and installed a TV set, enabling the art lover to study the painting and the creative process simultaneously. "Much to my surprise it became a pretty good painting," Ulrich says, adding modestly, "the racket we used is also quite nice."
Waite Hoyt, the former Yankee pitcher and longtime Cincinnati broadcaster, keeps busy at 70 doing occasional television commercials. The movie Beau James, with Bob Hope playing the late Jimmy Walker, was on the tube in Cincinnati the other evening, and it was interrupted by Hoyt plugging the Allstate Home Improvement Company. When the movie resumed, the scene was Yankee Stadium, and the camera zoomed in on Hope sitting in the stands. His first words? "Put in Waite Hoyt!"
Ken Venturi may suffer from cold hands but not, apparently, from cold feet—he's just become a licensed sports-car driver. Venturi became seriously interested in race driving last year, when he played in the pre-500 tournament at Indianapolis, so he signed up at the SCCA driver's school in Sonoma, Calif. He finished among the top 10 in a class of 106, of whom only 69 completed the course. "He was a good student," says instructor Bill Haener. "He has a feel for racing, but he wasn't a know-it-all, like some guys." Says Venturi, "Golf is a lot like driving. The smoother you are, the faster you can go. And in racing you can't think back or too far in advance. In golf I sometimes found myself thinking where the flag was placed on the fifth hole while I was putting on the first or second. In that sense, driving helps me concentrate for golf." Venturi plans to join the golf tour next month, but he has signed with Firestone and hopes to race late in the year.
An eight-oared shell was presented to Columbia University last month in honor of Mark Van Doren—Pulitzer Prize poet, critic and retired Columbia English professor. Van Doren, in turn, honored the school by writing a poem for the occasion. "It's only four lines long so I'll have no trouble remembering it," he said before reciting This Shell. Van Doren admitted having "no history with reference to Columbia crew," but tried to capture "the lightness of the shell and its responsiveness to the men rowing." He succeeded admirably: "Weightless in water, swift as wind,/ Subtle of purpose—a feather blown—/ I go with my oarsmen where they will,/ My beautiful body and theirs all one." Mrs. Van Doren then christened the shell, liberally splashing it with Harlem River water from a champagne bottle. No one suggested she break the bottle over the bow, and Mrs. Van Doren was most cooperative. Who'd want to crack a $2,300 shell?
"He's very good at Ping-Pong, almost professional class," cooed Elizabeth Taylor of Richard Burton in their television interview with David Frost, explaining about a small diamond she was wearing with the diamond. "Richard told me," she said, "if you can get 10 points in a game with me, I will give you the perfect gem. So I got him drunk and I beat him."
Bucktoothed little boys can look forward to having their teeth straightened by Gary Cuozzo and Billy Cannon, who, to date, have been in the business of making big boys' teeth crooked. After seven years of off-season study, both have graduated from the University of Tennessee College of Dentistry where Cuozzo received the Faculty Medal for having racked up the highest scholastic average in his class. Both are presently enrolled in a program at Loyola of Chicago leading to a master's degree in oral biology and a certificate in orthodontics. In other words, QB (or TE), D.D.S., M.S.
"Most guys who write books," says new author and veteran Astro Pitcher Jim Bouton, "are at the top of their careers—Carl Yastrzemski, Frank Robinson, Sandy Koufax—and theirs are filled with World Series anecdotes—the success stuff. Mine isn't like that. I just kept notes on different things about the game, funny sayings, things that happen in the clubhouse and such." Bouton's book, Ball Four, will be released in June. "I thought if I ever got to be famous or great I'd write a book about it," he explains. "Unfortunately, I couldn't wait any longer."
"But ye...shall fall like one of the princes," says the Bible, and demonstrating how princes go about it is Carl Gustaf of Sweden. His Highness—or lowness for the moment—recently entered something called a "Mardi Gras on skis, a costume speed race," which was part of pre-Easter festivities on Sweden's Storlien Mountain. Dressed as a member of a medical emergency team, the crown prince was a bit hampered by having to carry one end of a stretcher complete with "patient." He fell several times, breaking both skis, and a few days later, on the slalom course, it wasn't his skis, it was his left arm. In between, however, he did complete the three-kilometer cross-country event. Thirty-four minutes is considered good time. Carl Gustaf did it in 23.
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