Having grown accustomed to her pace—Warsaw, Prague, Belgrade and Moscow in the past four years—Belgians generally regard with affectionate tolerance the Iron Curtain raisings of their beloved Queen Elisabeth, 85, widow of King Albert and grandmother of reigning King Baudouin. But last week, as the indefatigable matriarch boarded a Soviet Tupolev jet for a three-week junket to Peking, Brussels' satirical weekly Pan somewhat impatiently offered her a ghostwritten speech—just in case she might be called upon for a bit of Communist auto-criticism. Pan's suggested script: "Wife of a bloody imperialist, mother of an unscrupulous colonialist, grandmother of a despotic exploiter of the people, I appear before you with the hope that the magnanimity of the Chinese people will authorize me to work at the construction of a dike along the Si-kiang, thus to end well an idle life."
As he awaited the arrival of his seventh child, Bing Crosby, 57, waxed pensive about the snares of parenthood. "With this new set," he said of his children by Second Wife Kathy Grant, 27, "I'm going to try not to repeat the mistakes I made with Gary and Lindsay and the twins." Before the bout of self-criticism was over, the man who has crooned his way to a multimillion-dollar fortune even produced a suggestion for his own epitaph. "If I forget," he enjoined Parade Writer Lloyd Shearer, "you tell Kathy I'd like this line: 'He was an average guy who could carry a tune.' "
"It's time you creative television professionals lit a few million candles to take our children out of the darkness." So saying, the New Frontier's outspoken FCC chairman, Newton Minow, 35, proposed that the nation's TV networks guarantee at least one hour per afternoon of quality programing for children—perhaps through a rotation system that would "divide the competitive disadvantages, if there are any." Within hours after Minow made his plea at a conclave of broadcasting brass, all three major networks made cautiously approving noises, promised to talk the matter over.
Topping the guest list at a $100-a-ticket benefit staged by the American Cancer Society aboard the liner Nieuw Amsterdam, Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower found that charity has its own rewards. No sooner had the ship slipped across the three-mile limit outside hurricane-roiled New York harbor than its gambling salon busted wide open. While Mamie, concentrating on the roulette wheel, raked in $75 in funny money exchangeable for donated gifts, the old soldier faded his way into another $60 at the crap table. "I just bet on some fellow holding the dice whom I had never seen before," beamed Ike, "and, by gosh, I came up a winner." Clutching at the Eisenhower coattails was Hungarian Hanger-On Eva Gabor, who burbled, "You're so vunderful, so vunderful." Wondered Ike to Mamie: "Who is she?"