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On Arizona location, Air Force Reserve Colonel James Stewart, playing an Army major in a blood-and-mud World War II movie titled Mountain Road, stepped front and center, got an almost-legal field promotion. The film's technical adviser, retired Army Brigadier General Frank Dorn, pinned stars on the collar of "Major" Stewart's soiled fatigue uniform. Cinemactor Stewart, a World War II bomber pilot and group commander (20 missions), had just got word from Washington that the Senate Armed Services Committee had unanimously approved his promotion to real-life brigadier rank. His upgrading had been blocked since 1957 by Maine's unyielding Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith, his own light-colonel sister (retired) in Air Force arms. Colonel Smith last week dropped her opposition to Jimmy Stewart. The Defense Department assured the committee that active Pilot Stewart will, if a national emergency comes, be grounded in a public-relations billet. If any proof were needed that Stewart will be a thoroughly competent armchair general, it came last week in a fine CBS-TV documentary program (Cowboy Five Seven) about the Strategic Air Command. The filmed show's producer-director-narrator: Stewart. His promotion will be official after certain Senate approval this week.
Vacationing in Fort Worth to get away from it all, Louisiana's ailing Democratic Governor Earl K. Long, 63, obstinately ignored his grievous state of health (a continuing mental crackup, failing heart, aftereffects of a mild stroke), declared that he is as knowledgeable as all his doctors and psychiatrists put together, "dis-hired" the whole passel of them. In the Will Rogers suite of the Hotel Texas next day, in rumpled drawers and sports shirt, Long received Methodist Parson G. W. French Jr., president of the city's General Ministers Association. After Long had rambled on for an hour, the Rev. Mr. French emerged, asked: "Does he always cuss so much?"
Toward week's end, not getting an expected invitation to harangue the Texas state legislature, Ole Earl headed for El Paso and the night life of Juarez, just across the Mexican border. He bounced back fast to foray north into New Mexico, where at Ruidoso Downs race track he plunked down a horse-choking roll of at least $12,000 on several races, later allowed: "Ah think Ah made a couple hundred dollars."