As far as he is concerned, famed Chemist Harold C. Urey told University of Miami students, his own study of the universe "leaves little doubt that life has occurred on other planets. I doubt if the human race is the most intelligent form of life."
All this chatter about interplanetary travel began to irritate Novelist-Columnist J. B. Priestley, who wrote in the London News Chronicle: "The world we know at present is in no fit state to take over the dreariest little meteor ... If we have the courage and patience, the energy and skill, to take us voyaging to other planets, then let us use some of these to tidy up and civilize this earth. One world at a time, please."
Before he flew to Stockholm to pick up his Nobel Prize money, Novelist William (Intruder in the Dust) Faulkner, a qualified authority on the seamy side of life, was cornered by Manhattan reporters who asked him what he considered the most decadent aspect of American life. Answered Faulkner: "It's this running people down and getting interviews and pictures of them just because something's happened to them." For the presentation in Stockholm, Faulkner made his first appearance before a microphone and TV cameras, wore white tie & tails for the first time, met fellow Prizewinner Bertrand Russell, who confessed that he had read none of Faulkner's books. Asked by reporters for a comment on his prize, Faulkner said: "This is the top. After that, there is nothing for a writer to live for, to wait for any longer. I am proud and flattered."
In Denver, Violinist Yehudi Menuhin, 34, onetime child prodigy, mused: "I have never looked upon myself as an oddity, or regarded myself as anything but a completely normal human being.
Because of this attitude, I have never toppled off an imaginary pedestal."
After due thought, the National Association of Women Artists decided that America's "most stimulating faces" included: Ernest Hemingway, whose face "proclaims, 'I've hair on my chest'"; Cinemactress Ava Gardner, whose face "stimulates desire" and "has the potential explosiveness of the H-bomb"; the New York Yankees' Catcher Yogi Berra, who "stimulates women's subconscious yearning for the Neanderthal man" with "the most down-to-earth face in America."
"A person has to be unnormal to get into this kind of business," concluded Cinemactress Lauren ("The Look") Bacall. "In the first place, you have to be slightly demented to make a fool of yourself in front of ... a whole crew of people who don't care a bit about what you are doing . . . Also you have to be a little nuts to get up at 6 o'clock every morning to go to work."
Money & Muscle
Rachele Mussolini, 61, widow of the late Benito, finally got possession of her old dowry farm near Forlì, plus six other farms and two villas once owned by the dictator. One catch: the government slapped a $16,000 mortgage on the property owned by Il Duce, which represented, it said, wartime profits made during his regime.