"Poor girl," clucked Movie Czar Jack Valenti after a champagne-party chat at the girl's $1,500,000 Appia Antica villa outside Rome. "She told me that for five years they've been having hardly anything to do with each other. It's a shame." Actress Gina Lollobrigida, 38, did her best to cover up her unhappiness by giving a blast for 80 movie types including Claudia Cardinale, in honor of Valenti, who is touring Europe for the first time as the new president of the Motion Picture Association of America. Gina and her husband of 17 years, Yugoslav-born Dr. Milko Skofic, a non-practicing physician long weary of being Mr. Lollo, had finally arranged for a legal separation. Eventually they will get a divorce, even though Gina might have to give up her citizenship in divorceless Italy.
As he flew into Johannesburg last June for a four-day visit frostily ignored by the South African government, New York's Senator Robert Kennedy told the welcoming crowd: "We shall not always agree." That was an understatement, at least as far as the apartheid policymakers were concerned. Last week there was absolutely no agreement when Bobby announced he plans to return next summer at the invitation of Johannesburg's South African Foundation, a private businessmen's group. "Nothing of the sort," snapped a foundation official. "We never invited Kennedy here, and we have no intention of doing so."
The three-piece wine-red velvet getup might have sold well in London's Carnaby Street. As it happened, the gear was up for grabs on more conservative New Bond Street, where Sotheby's was auctioning off a suit worn by King
George III in the days when he was taxing the shirt off his American colonies. A colonial very nearly got the threads back. Industrialist Jack Stallworth of Mobile, Ala., had a friend bid $500 for the wine-red number and three other 18th century outfits, only to have Lady Cecilia Howard, owner of Castle Howard in Yorkshire, outbid him by $18 for the King's old clothes.
When Supersalesman Matthew J. Culligan took over NBC radio in 1956, its operations were a staggering $3,000,000 in the red. Within three years, Joe Culligan had set the radio network to humming profitably along again. Later, as president of the beleaguered Curtis Publishing Co., his skill at troubleshooting misfired, and he was forced out after an executive-suite revolt. But, as he is fond of saying, "a comeback career seems to be my lot." Now he has gone back to radio, this time as president of the nation's biggest network, the Mutual Broadcasting System. Culligan wants to expand the system from 519 affiliated stations to 600. That, he suggested, "would be a happy little universe."