Verbally, and for the best of causes, she has ridden as rough as daddy—and the ride's not over. As her Negro chauffeur drove Alice Roosevelt Longworth, 81, through placid residential Washington, he nearly collided with a taxi, whose white Southern driver jumped out, yelling: "You black s.o.b., what do you think you're doing?" At which Teddy Roosevelt's daughter rolled down her window, fastened the cab driver with a cool blue glare, and demanded: "You white s.o.b., what do you think you're doing?"
She was a doll of 19 when she bowed on Broadway in 1930, and 14 years have passed since her lyric legs last graced a Manhattan stage. Not that Ginger Rogers has been idle. Looking maturely desirable at 53, she has headed the road-show company of The Unsinkable Molly Brown and found time for TV and movie roles as well. This summer, when Carol Channing, 44, leaves the Broadway cast of Hello, Dolly!, the role will be spiced with Ginger.
It certainly looked like the Governor. But then the Governor would hardly be galloping barefoot, in pajamas and bathrobe, through the streets of suburban Des Moines at 6 in the morning. Or would he? Wearily, Iowa's Democratic Governor Harold Hughes, 43, explained that Mike, his Irish setter, had escaped from the house, and he had given chase—naturally—so as not to violate the city ordinance that prohibits dogs from running loose. After pursuing Mike for 45 minutes down streets, over front lawns and across a muddy ballpark where he lost his slippers, Hughes finally wearied of the chase and returned to his mansion. Next he tried summoning his wayward pooch with a hunting horn. After awaking the neighborhood, the Governor gave up and Mike wandered home. "He seemed," said his master, "to have enjoyed it very much."
"I feel naked," pouted Gina Lollobrigida, 36. Coming back from a wardrobe fitting to the Beverly Hills Hotel, she discovered that $16,000 worth of her diamonds and other jewels had been confiscated by state agents as security against $14,200 in California taxes that she has owed since 1959. It was all a "silly, stupid misunderstanding," insisted La Lollo, but she lost no time setting matters straight with a draft on her bank account in Switzerland. "What is so incredible to me," she murmured, "is that the tax people wouldn't believe that I have assets."
He's the only fighter in the world who won the heavyweight championship twice. He's also the only fighter in the world who lost the heavyweight championship twice. Floyd Patterson, 30, broods about it. What do the folks out there think of him? He got some idea 21 years ago when his neighbor in Scarsdale built a 6-ft. spite fence between their houses. Floyd had an even better notion. He built a fence between his face and the world. Ever since, he has paid his own personal exterior decorators $3,000 a year to camouflage his phiz whenever he mingles with the public. Decked out in a false nose, mustache and beard, Floyd certainly doesn't look like Floyd. Autograph hunters keep thinking he's Thelonious Monk.