In the French weekly magazine Arts, Italian Socialist Ignazio Silone, ex-Communist novelist (Fontamara, Bread and Wine), protested the manner in which the word freedom is bandied about: "Whenever a number of intellectuals get together to debate the grave problems of our world, at least one of them, in an effort to ennoble the discussion, will begin talking of the Good, the True . . . After having heard the term 'freedom of thought' mentioned for the 54th time, a stale smell gradually invades the room, an odor which reminds me of fried fish. Discussions about Freedom are bound to remain sterile, unless we take this word down from its high pedestal and place it on a more humble, concrete basis . . . the freedom to leave one's country, the freedom to listen to any radio program one chooses, and the freedom of reading any book one likes without risk of going to jail."
In Manhattan, Novelist Ruth (All About Eileen) McKenney, who was notably humorless about her membership in the Communist Party a few years ago, told a New York Times reporter that she fears the American public is losing its taste for humor. Said she: "A lot of humor implies criticism of established institutions and behavior, and right now we're trying to keep our faith in the established order intact. [Self-appointed censors] want people to laugh only at the approved jokes. No more levity when it comes to religion, intelligence tests, foreign accents and insanity . . . Bad taste. Why, the great tradition of American humor is built upon 'bad taste,' if you want to call it that. The humorist works with material from life, not a Hollywood-soap-opera version of it."
Hither & Yon
Aboard the Queen Mary, bound for England and a summer of television work, Actress Beatrice Lillie (Lady Peel) refused to give photographers a cheesecake pose, instead favored them with a winning smile and a ladylike version of the traditional ship's-rail picture.
British Composer Benjamin Britten was commissioned to write a coronation opera. His subject: the affairs of Elizabeth I and the Ear! of Essex.
Mrs. Lina Elise Grey, widow of the prolific sagebrush writer Zone Grey, offered his collection of manuscripts, seashells, big-game and fish trophies to Zanesville, Ohio, if the home town would promise to house them in a suitable memorial.
When Belgium's 21-year-old King Baudouin, the world's most eligible bachelor monarch, left to join his family for a visit in Italy, wishful matchmakers thought they could hear the distant peal of royal wedding bells. The object of their speculation: Princess Margherita, 22, a cousin of the late King Victor Emmanuel. It was more than coincidence, they insisted, that members of both families had met in Rome and Florence.