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A farewell banquet was accorded Financier John Hay Whitney, U.S. Ambassador-designate to the Court of St. James's, at the Long Island estate of his sister, Joan Whitney Payson, co-owner with Whitney of the famed Greentree Stable. Next day, in a Manhattan hospital recovering from gastric ulcer surgery, the diplomat-to-be's wife, Betsey Gushing Whitney, heard a special tape recording of the tributes paid her husband at the dinner. Among the notable banquet guests: CBS Board Chairman William S. Paley and high-styled Barbara Gushing Paley, Long Island Newsday Publisher Alicia Patterson, Broadway Producer Richard Halliday and his musicomedienne wife Mary Martin, retiring G.O.P. National Committee Chairman Leonard W. Hall (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), New York's freshman Republican Senator Jacob K. Javits, New York Herald Tribune President-Editor Ogden R. Reid, TV Comic Sid Caesar.
In the Kremlin's glittering Hall of St. George, Celestine Bohlen, 6, daughter of U.S. Ambassador to the U.S.S.R.. Charles E. ("Chip") Bohlen, joined some 2,000 kiddies in celebrating the Russian Christmas season. They howled and clapped for acrobats, singers and magicians, then met a bearded gentleman strongly resembling Santa Claus but introduced himself as Grandfather Frost. He led the children around a towering evergreen that looked exactly like a Christmas tree but, in the parlance of atheistic Communists, was disguised under the tinkly title of "New Year's tree."
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Wisconsin's retrogressive Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy hove out of political limbo on ABC's TV Press Conference to try a comeback by his usual method, namely, whittling others off at the temples to make himself look like a larger dwarf. On Joe's current "dangerous" list: White House Assistant Sherman Adams, U.S. Delegate to the U.N. Paul Hoffman ("a throwback on the human race"), Presidential Disarmament Adviser Harold E. Stassen (a Stevensonite who "goes further" than Adlai), and the President's brother, Milton Eisenhower ("no more a Republican than ... a Hottentot"). Then McCarthy shot his real bolt of news: he. 47, and his pretty wife Jean have adopted a five-week-old baby girl, their first. Is Joe sick, on the verge of resigning from the Senate? Declaring his candidacy for re-election in '58, the Senator offered to lace on "eight-ounce gloves," take on anyone who believes he is flagging.
Boston's famed Heart Specialist Paul Dudley White, 70, an energetic mountain climber, wood splitter, bicycle rider and whale hunter (to take their pulses), welcomed a snowstorm to help demonstrate one of his favorite maxims: "Hard work never killed a healthy man." Unpuffingly shoveling snow piled behind his Beacon Street office, Dr. White advised all healthy folks to take exercise in keeping with their age and general physical tone, build up to exertion slowly if they're soft, certainly not refrain from snow shoveling if their only ailment is just being 70. Said the doctor with some concern: "We are already becoming a soft race dependent on gadgets which are not likely to protect our youth from the chief hazards of tomorrow."