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"Skating mamas" are a strange breed, like the mothers of violin prodigies and child movie stars. They watch over their daughters like circling hawks, and fuss around them like anxious hens. This week, as usual, they will sit around hotel lobbies in St. Moritz, discussing other skating mothers who are out of earshot—and their daughters. Mrs. Scott is understandably possessive and protective of her daughter, but does her best to avoid the infighting among "skating mamas." She wants Barbara Ann to stay as she is: winning titles by trying harder and being more precise than her rivals. But it is Barbara Ann herself who seems to have most to say about what she is going to do —and she is gradually being converted to Coach Galbraith's accent on showmanship.
If Barbara Ann wins the Olympic title, will she turn pro? It is a good bet that she will. Hollywood is making eyes at her, so is at least one ice show, and 101 manufacturers of soaps and skin lotions would soon be waving $1,000 bills at her. Says Barbara Ann: "I wish people would stop saying I am going to turn professional all the time. There is no world competition in professional skating—and I like competition." This was obviously the right thing to say at this point, said the cynics at St. Moritz.
Barbara Ann ignores them. Says she: "You know, what I would like would be to take a degree in domestic science. Some time I want to marry and have children, and I believe that should be organized economically, tidily and exactly, like Olympic skating, or anything else."
* With a lapse of 1,500 years between the last of the ancient Greek games and the first of the moden ones in Athens in 1896. In the first Olympics, women were barred not only as contestants but as spectators; in reprisal, they started the Heraea games in which they ran barefoot, with right shoulder and breast bare. They wouldn't let the men look.
* In Madison Square Garden last week, as the hula-dancing queen of her own Hollywood Ice Revue, La Henie had fined down to 107.
* By passing the last of eight basic school figure tests.