Hundreds of boats sounded a salute, and dock cranes dipped in tribute as Sir Francis Chichester, waylaid the past month by a duodenal ulcer, at last sailed Gipsy Moth IV up the Thames to the Royal Naval College at Greenwich, where he was formally knighted by Queen Elizabeth with Sir Francis Drake's sword. Later, the solo circumnavigator rode a white Rolls-Royce convertible through London's financial district to the cheers of 250,000 fellow Britons. "You personify the spirit of initiative, adventure and determination," London's Lord Mayor told Chichester at the official city reception, and he might have included Sir Francis' wife in that as well. Unmoved by the fact that the reception was scheduled for the Guildhall, where formal dress is required, Lady Chichester, 65, insisted on wearing her favorite cherry-red trouser suit, forced the Lord Mayor to shift the proceedings to his own home. ∙∙∙
In his long and crowded career as painter, illustrator, dairy farmer, explorer, author and lecturer, Rockwell Kent, 85, of Ausable Forks, N.Y., has also found time for a procession of leftist causes, from the Wobblies on. As a token of their appreciation, the Soviets this spring awarded him a Lenin Peace Prize worth 25,000 rubles (officially $27,775). Not to be outdone, Kent disclosed that he has donated $10,000 of it to "the suffering women and children of Viet Nam's Liberation Front" as "a token of my shame and sorrow." Next it was the U.S. Treasury's turn, and they announced a violation of the Trading with the Enemy Act. Which didn't mean Kent could pocket the $10,000, because an American can't take rubles out of Russia anyway.
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It has been six years since he danced onscreen in The Pleasure of His Company, and he has done little but a few TV specials, which take him a mere matter of weeks to rehearse. These obviously left him too much free time and energy, so last week Fred Astaire, 68, went back to work in another movie. Signed for the lead in Warner Bros. $4,000,000 version of the 1947 Broadway musical Finian's Rainbow, Astaire as usual is choreographing all his own numbers, as usual is going into training like a prizefighter to get the old bones in tip-tap shape. The master will have some new bones gliding alongside, though, in the itty-bitty form of British Popster Petula Clark, 33, who has never before danced professionally.
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He was simply one among thousands of tourists in Vienna as he ambled through the gardens and sighed, "Isn't it grand? I don't remember Vienna being so beautiful." Of course he hadn't seen the city since November of 1918, when, as the six-year-old Crown Prince Otto of Austria-Hungary, he was bundled off to exile. Now Dr. Otto Habsburg, 54, of Pocking, West Germany, he has long since renounced his nonexistent throne, denied any claim he might have had to the royal palaces and grounds, and declined even to live in Austria. Nevertheless, Austria's royally spooked Socialists still heard the clanking of imperial chains. "He doesn't leave any doubt about his intentions," cried Vienna's daily Arbeiter Zeitung. "He allows himself to be photographed in front of a palace."
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