"Civilization needs friends," Harvard's busy Astronomer-Harlow Shapley reported to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (see SCIENCE). He felt the lack. "Nobody cares aggressively about its continuation," he complained. Dr. Shapley, an astronomer who worries about almost everything under the stars, plumped for a "positive friendship for civilization, expeditiously organized and steadily maintained. . . . Time is short," he warned. The five great threats as he saw them in climactic order: pandemic plague, world warfare with superweapons; boredom; sexually debilitating dope; and "the genius-maniac." The simple way to dispose of the last: ". . . Kill off, while young, all primates that show any evidence of promise. . . ." The words were hardly out of his mouth before alarmed citizens were asking when the killing was supposed to start. Dr. Shapley gritted his teeth, explained that he was just trying to lighten a heavy subject.
Winners
Champion crowd-puller of the year, reported U.S. movie exhibitors (polled by the trade's Motion Picture Herald), was 42-year-old Bing Crosby — as he was the year before and the year before that.
The very Best-Dressed Woman, reported Manhattan's dressmakers, was Mrs. Howard Hawks, the Hollywood producer's wife, who was not among the top ten the year before. The rest of the latest ten-best-dressed were mostly old familiars who had been on & off various lists for years—e.g., Mrs. Harrison Williams, the Duchess of Windsor, Mrs. William Rhinelander Stewart.
Winner Hawks, 26, who used to model for fun and now for fun hunts game with sportsmen like Clark Gable and Ernest Hemingway (see col. 3), thought it was "awfully nice" to get picked, offered a partial explanation of her success: "I have a tall, skinny frame that clothes look well on." She wears no hats. She's a "great believer in simplicity in clothes," she said, and figured that in '46 she spent about one-fourth as much on her wardrobe as any of the other best-dressed—at the most, $10,000 (not counting furs and jewels).
Relatives
At Broadway's Iceland Restaurant a new, five-man band made its debut, under moon-faced Drummer Paul Whiteman Jr., 21-year-old son of the moon-faced "King of Jazz." Paul Jr.'s own billing: "The Crown Prince of Rhythm."
In Princeton, N.J., Jean Casadesus, 21-year-old son (and pupil) of Pianists Robert and Gaby Casadesus, rehearsed one of his father's favorite pieces—Ravel's Piano Concerto—for his concert debut this spring with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Washington society learned that it would have to continue without Margaret Truman for "the rest of the winter. She let it be known that she intended to stick to her voice study (with opera as the goal), and would do the. studying in Manhattan.
Movers & Shakers
Eugene O'Neill got a gratifying pat on the back from a Manhattan judge. A bum accused of swiping the manuscript of an unproduced, unpublished O'Neill play from a parked car wanted the charge against him reduced from grand larceny to petty theft; but the judge firmly said no.