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PEOPLE
The British newspaper The Guardian asked Graham Hill, who is convalescing from his accident (SI, Nov. 3, 1969), to test-drive the three-wheeled car Britain provides for disabled persons. "It's a terrible thing," Hill said last week. The Guardian quoted him as finding such faults as the grouping of clutch, brakes and steering throttle on a tiller operated by one hand; the tiller itself ("very, very clumsy") and steering. "I found I had to be very careful not to turn the machine over," Hill said. "I have never been in any vehicle like this before, unless you count two vintage cars on the London-Brighton rally, and I would prefer to drive either of them.... I felt very vulnerable in traffic. In fact, I was frightened." Hill also pointed out that "these cars are freaks, another bad point psychologically. When they are driving a car, people in wheel chairs have a chance to appear the same as anyone else, but not in these things." Since the test. Hill has visited the House of Lords to discuss the adaptation of conventional cars for invalids. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the firm making the three-wheelers has observed. "It is a small minority of drivers a lot less disabled than most who are kicking up a fuss. You mustn't believe all you read, especially when you get racing drivers to test cars like these. Really, no one's satisfied these days. If you have a mini you want a Rolls-Royce."
"Back in the old days I used to play tennis with people like George Jones, Hymie Finkelstein and Irving Schwartz," observes Comedian Alan King, "but last year I played with Gonzales, Laver, Roche, Newcombe, Stolle and Emerson. My game isn't improving, but my partners are."
In 1950 Gussie Moran struck a resounding blow for women's rights—more specifically, for a woman's right to wear lace panties. She did throw Wimbledon into a tizzy, but if today's feminine liberationists suspect that Gussie wasn't their kind of pioneer, they are correct. Twenty years after her triumph she is being quoted by Women's Wear Daily as saying that she wouldn't be surprised to see Agnew run for President and that she'd vote for him, but, "I really don't think women should vote anyway. The man in the family should vote. I hope we never see a woman President... she'd be too emotional!" Gussie observes that she herself leads a lib-crated life and has a very masculine role in society. "However," she adds, prettily, "I prefer apple pies."
At the first annual Kentucky Thoroughbred Pro-Celebrity Golf Tournament in Louisville recently, Jimmy Durante fairly well stole the show from the pros and such fellow celebrities as Al Hirt and Kentucky Governor Louie B. Nunn, though the Schnozz did not, of course, play any golf. His PR man, Joe Bleedon, believes that the 77-year-old Durante, who is strictly a horseplayer, has swung a club once in his life, "But that was so far back that I can't remember when," he says. "It was a celebrity affair of some kind, and somehow the match was interrupted when a train passed by and everyone on it screamed at Jimmy." At this latest celebrity affair Jimmy's ostensible function was to serve as "executive caddie" for Dale Robertson. When a sudden shower interrupted his duties (which consisted principally of peering down the fairway after Robertson's tee shots), a reporter asked respectfully about his obvious vitality. Had he kept in shape all his life? "Yes indeedy!" said Durante. With what kind of workouts? "Oh, dis and dat." But what kind of dis and dat? "Just dis and dat," Durante said firmly, as ambiguous and definite as ever.
"Who's foolish enough to be swimming in Chesapeake Bay on a cold night like this?" called out Rogers Morton, national chairman of the Republican Party, from his launch. "The British Ambassador," His Excellency, The Right Honorable John Freeman, M.B.E., shouted back. Freeman, his wife and Financier E. Taylor Chewning, an American friend, were returning to Chewning's yacht around midnight after a dinner party on the Eastern Shore when their dinghy capsized. But, Chewning reports, "The Freemans are very able swimmers. They were calm and collected."
Randy Matson was less than two inches off his world record when he put the shot 71'4¼" at the Kennedy Games in Berkeley, Calif. last month. As he explained later, "I'm a stockbroker in Houston, and the market was so low most of the year I just had to get out and work off some frustrations." Presumably, as the market climbs back up, Mat-son's marks will go back down.
Jack Meyer will not even retire as headmaster of Millfield, the most expensive school in Britain, until 1971, but he has already announced that when he dies he'd like to have his ashes scattered on the cricket pitch there. "It's a pretty fast pitch as it is," he says, "and a few ashes should make it even faster." This puts Meyer one up on the Duke of Wellington, who thought highly of the playing fields of Eton but never expressed the wish to be one of them.
TWO PHOTOS
