“All I can say is that women, when they are in power, are much harsher than men … You’re schemers, you’re evil. Every one of you.” The misogynist? Iran’s Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, 54, in an interview with idol-smashing Italian Journalist Oriana Fallaci published in the New Republic. Fallaci, whose belt already holds the scalps of Henry Kissinger, Willy Brandt and Nguyen Van Thieu, scored again with the revelation that the Shah is not, after all, a ladies’ man. What prompted His Sublime Highness’s anger, however, was something quite simple. Fallaci had asked him if it were true that he had reverted to harem, taking another wife in addition to his third official one, Empress Farah, 35. Said the Shah: “A stupid, vile, disgusting libel.”
The plot of the 1952 play was distinctly threadbare: seven candidates for the Distressed Gentlefolk’s Aid Association trapped by a blizzard in a provincial guesthouse with a maniacal killer. But Murder Manufacturer Agatha Christie said optimistically, “I do think we will get quite a good run out of it,” as she signed over all royalties to her grandson Mathew Prichard, 9. Twenty-one years later, The Mousetrap has become the longest running play ever, totting up 8,717 performances in London and earning $7.5 million. Prichard, now 30 and a gentleman farmer in Wales, declined to comment on the extent of his fortune, and gallantly accompanied his benefactor Dame Agatha, 83, to a party celebrating the historic anniversary.
The U.S. Board of Parole took positive action in the case of Clifford Irving, who is serving a 2½-year sentence for dreaming up an “autobiography” of Howard Hughes and selling it to McGraw-Hill for $765,000. Irving had hoped to spend Christmas with his sons, Nedsky, 5, and Barnaby, 3, especially since their mother Edith is sequestered in a Swiss jail for her part in the hoax. Instead Irving will be sprung on Feb. 14, 1974. It seemed almost as heavyhanded as Irving’s own joke, but then the board could have chosen April 1.
“London always meant the most to me,” exulted a magnanimous Maria Callas, 50, after she had ignited the Royal Festival Hall’s S.R.O. audience. Ending an eight-year absence from the London stage, Callas shared a program of four duets and three solos each with Tenor Giuseppe di Stefano, 52. Three thousand ticket holders, who had spent an uneasy month of suspense after Callas canceled a previous concert, responded ecstatically. They gave the diva a 30-minute standing ovation, pelted the stage with flowers and finally mobbed her limousine. Exhilarated, Callas declared: “I can go on from here. I thought at one time I would never beat my nerves, but I have.” However, that was before the critics had their say. Unanimous in mourning the passing of a great voice, they described her performance as “thin, hesitant” and her top register as weak, even squally. The man from the Financial Times summed it up: “The effect was —well, as if the final duet of Carmen had been a record played on an old-fashioned gramophone.”
“I’m gonna love you like nobody’s loved you, come rain or come shine.” For a brief moment at Manhattan’s St. Regis hotel, the ’30s notion that hearts were made to be broken was revived. The spiritualist: former Liverpudlian Mabel Mercer, 73, who began singing 60 years ago and went on to become the Madame de Sévigné of the supper clubs. Seated in a Louis XV armchair, Mercer held the kind of wry musical conversation on affairs of the heart that has made a minor art form of ballad singing and influenced singers from Billie Holiday to Barbra Streisand. Aware that it is her phrasing and timing rather than her voice that turns the most banal ballad into a timeless vignette, Mercer says cryptically, “It’s all in the punctuation.”
International Love Object Elizabeth Taylor, 41, makes news consistently by divorcing, making movies, acquiring jewels and suffering physical travails. The scar-worn star is now back in the hospital at U.C.L.A. recovering from surgery for removal of an ovarian cyst. To date, Elizabeth’s medical history would make Marcus Welby a millionaire: in 30 years, she has had 33 operations. Perhaps because Taylor’s medical crises have sometimes coincided with her emotional traumas, visitors to her VIP hospital suite are carefully screened. Among the privileged few allowed to help her recuperate are Old Friend Peter Lawford and former Used-Car Dealer Henry Wynberg, Elizabeth’s current companion.
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