Pablo Picasso has written a play—in six short acts—about The Two Little Doggies (who make one big dog) and their friends Fat Anguish, Skinny Anguish, The Round End, The Big Foot, The Onion, The Tart (pastry), Silence and The Curtains. The cast is now looking for a home on Broadway for fall occupancy, but may have difficulty finding one. The play, Le Désir Attrapé par la Queue (Desire Caught by the Tail), is concerned chiefly with food and sex. The Tart is onstage almost continually in nothing but a pair of stockings. And for the most part Picasso writes as he paints. An example:
"[Big Foot] is beautiful as a star it's a dream repainted in watercolors on a pearl ... his whole body is full of the light of a thousand lighted electric bulbs—his trousers are inflated with all the perfumes of Arabia his hands are transparent peace and pistachio ice cream—the oysters of his eyes enclose suspended gardens. . . ."
The Federal Board of Geographic Names broke the spell of a muggy July day with an ice-cold footnote to history: Franklin Roosevelt had once declined the honor of having an Antarctic sea named for him. The President had informed the board that he would much prefer "a smoking volcano" to a frozen ocean. The board informed the President that it was fresh out of smoking volcanoes.
Captain John Eisenhower, whose father had just expressed interest in the Army's chow (TIME, July 21), enrolled in a cooking class at Georgia's Fort Benning. Was that, a reporter wondered, a reflection on the culinary prowess of his bride? "Absolutely not," said John, adding a thoughtful hedge: "Perhaps it makes me a more critical judge."
In the Purple
Elizabeth & Philip would have a wedding with all the trimmings, after all. The public had shouted down all suggestions of an "austerity" affair. The ceremony would be held in Westminster Abbey, a Government spokesman said, probably in October. But it was "unlikely that . . . peers will be required to wear all their robes. . . . The moths have been in them."
King Haakcon VII came in for a little court jesting on the eve of his 75th birthday. Norway's Danish-born monarch granted audience to Danish-born Axel Lund, who runs a number of Norwegian hotels. The King said that he was happy to meet a Dane who had done so well in Norway. Replied Lund: "So am I, Your Majesty."
Rita Hayworth was queen for a night in London. At the world premiere of her latest picture, Down to Earth, her adoring, howling subjects milled so thickly about the theater entrance that she had to slip in by the stage door. Her Ministers of Publicity then hustled her out front to meet some courtiers: Anthony Eden, who looked pleasantly unimpressed, and U.S. Ambassador Lewis Douglas, who seemed to like what he saw. Then Rita was enthroned beside the Duchess of Gloucester, sister-in-law of King George VI, to watch the show.
In the Pink
There had been signs that George Bernard Shaw was mellowing in his lonesome latter years. Lately, when newsmen had rung up his Ayot St. Lawrence home,, the phone was answered immediately, as though he had been waiting beside it for someone to call. And long after he had answered reporters' questions, he would prattle on as though he pined for conversation.