Demurely wrapped in a fur-collared coat, Brigitte Bardot, 28, still managed to light Paris' dismal Palace of Justice with a pair of well-attended personal appearances. First she kindled a divorce action against Second Husband Jacques Charrier, 26, on the ground that he had "deserted the conjugal home." Next day she loyally testified on behalf of her eternal flame and possible No. 3, Actor Sami Frey, 27, who was suing the weekly Ici-Paris for calling him "The Man Who Destroys BB." Testily, she denied that Sami was insanely jealous, that he popped away at nudenik photographers in St.-Tropez with a .22, or that he got violent when she did love scenes on-camera with someone else. "He doesn't destroy me," insisted BB, "and he's welcome on the set any time he cares to come."
What England's Order of Merit lacks in tradition—having been founded a mere 60 years ago by King Edward VII—it makes up in exclusiveness: only 24 living Britons at any one time are entitled to write O.M. after their names. Filling two vacancies left by the deaths of Historian G. M. Trevelyan and Portraitist Augustus John, Queen Elizabeth named goateed Architect Sir Basil Spence, 55, rebuilder of the bombed-out Coventry Cathedral, and Aviation Pioneer Sir Geoffrey deHavilland, 80, whose company turned out swarms of Mosquito fighter-bombers during World War II. to join the distinguished company of such men as Poet T. S. Eliot, Prime Ministers Attlee and Churchill.
In Paris, it took but a single ballot to elect Novelist-Journalist Joseph Kessel, 64, to the rarefied ranks of the Académic Française A byliner for Paris' France-Soir and author of the international bestseller The Lion, grey-maned Kessel is the first reporter ever to win a seat in the Academic. His election drew indignant grumbles from a fellow academician. Legion of Honor Commander Henry Bordeaux, who wrote the Academic protesting the entry of "this Kessel, who has lived such a dissolute life."
From her Manhattan hospital bed in mid-October, the late Eleanor Roosevelt wrote her last column for McCall's Magazine. Titled "Mrs. Roosevelt's Christmas Sampler," it listed the holiday customs she loved best. Her favorite carol: Silent Night; her favorite Christmas benevolence: "To invite a stranger from a foreign country, who would be alone, to our Christmas dinner"; her favorite Christmas cards: "Adlai Stevenson's beautifully illuminated messages'"; her favorite ornament: "A little angel that has topped our family tree since my children were babies"; and her favorite Christmas recipe: a bowl of eggnog, laced with four jiggers of brandy.