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It might have been scripted by Alfred Hitchcock, but the absence of cameras and crew made the scene one of the scariest ever played by Actress Maureen O'Sullivan, 57. Alone in her bungalow in Weybridge, Surrey, after Daughter Mia Farrow, 23, had breezed off to London for the week, Maureen was asleep when two bandits burst into her bedroom, gagged and trussed her with nylon stockings, methodically ransacked the place, and escaped into the night with $13,200 worth of brooches, rings and necklaces. It took her half an hour to free herself and phone the police. Luckily, the thieves failed to find their apparent object: Mia's nine-carat, $84,000 diamond engagement ring, presented to her in happier days by Frank Sinatra, was in Los Angeles at the time.
Casting off from Casablanca last March 29, Delta Airlines Pilot Hugo Vihlen, 36, confidently squared away his six-foot sailboat, April Fool, and shaped a course for Miami Beach, 4,100 sea miles distant. For 84 days, Vihlen bobbed and tossed in the prevailing easterlies, subsisted on little else but bread and water, yet kept his sea legs and once happily waved greetings to a curious U.S. submarine. All he asked of the sub skipper was a slice of roast beef, but the galley was closed. For all his bold self-sufficiency, Vihlen's long journey came to a saddening landfall: though within sight of Miami, he was unable to buck the powerful northward flow of the Gulf Stream and the offshore westerly winds. He and April Fool had to finish the last 25 miles lashed to the side of a Coast Guard cutter—still setting a record for the smallest craft to sail the Atlantic, but leaving the bearded airman-turned-seaman "a little disappointed."
Messages from the media have bombarded Communicator Marshall McLuhan, 56, so rapidly that he hardly has time to translate them all into books. So he plans to publish a hot medium of his own — a newsletter called McLuhan's Dewline. Says the Canadian scholar-turned-guru: "It's going to be a distant-early-warning system to give advance notice to anyone who'll listen." Planned articles: "Love Thy Label as Thyself," "The End of the Muddle Class," and "The Executive as a Dropout." Should some disciples worry that McLuhan might label himself an ordinary editor, he plans to mix his printed material with occasional recordings called, punnily enough, "plattertudes."
Not all Hollywood actors have star quality at the polls. Take Gary Merrill (Twelve O'Clock High, All About Eve), for 17 years a Maine resident, who decided to take a crack at what he called "raising a little hell in Congress." Running as a G.O.P. peace candidate in Maine's First Congressional District, Merrill, 52, attacked pollution and poverty, tried everything from sidewalk electioneering in a rocking chair to reading poetry before local Rotary Clubs. Maine's citizens, however, preferred that he keep his hell raising at home. The result: Merrill lost to State Senator Horace Hildreth Jr., 36, son of a former Maine Governor who ran on a platform of drug and gun control, by nearly 18,000 votes.