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The man in scarlet robes, looking small and bent in the vast nave of London's Westminster Cathedral, was Josef Cardinal Mindszenty, 81. For many of his fellow Hungarian exiles, the frail figure celebrating Mass for them remained an abiding symbol of the cold war. In 1949 Mindszenty was convicted of treason, espionage and black marketing by the Communist regime in Hungary. He spent seven years in solitary confinement, enjoyed four days of freedom during the uprising in 1956 and then, when the Russians returned, remained for 15 more years in seclusion in the U.S. embassy. Since 1971, the former Primate of Hungary has been living in a seminary in Vienna—continuing, as he wrote Pope Paul, to lead "a life of prayer and penitence" in exile.
Down the steps of the private jetliner that had landed near Rome came the secretaries, a hairdresser and a pair of Pekingese dogs. Then Elizabeth Taylor Burton descended in order to rejoin her husband after their 17-day split.
Elizabeth had nothing to say to the press as she got into a car to be driven to the black Rolls-Royce where Richard Burton was waiting. Both Burtons were wet— eyed as they embraced, then sped to Sophia Loren's clay-red villa, close by in s the Alban Hills. Fans are advised to 5 stand by for the next installment.
"The house was a gutted ruin rising gaunt and stark out of a grove of unpruned cedar trees," wrote William Faulkner about the Old Frenchman place in his 1931 novel Sanctuary. He might well have been thinking of Rowan Oak, the 1840 mansion he bought in 1930 in Oxford, Miss. Last week the University of Mississippi purchased the refurbished mansion from Faulkner's only daughter for part of a new cultural center. The study wall, with its manuscript chapter outlines of a Faulkner novel, is already a tourist attraction.
"He was a no-good son of a bitch," George Jessel said about Singer Al Jolson, who died in 1950, "but he was the greatest entertainer I've ever seen." According to a new biography by Freelance Michael Freedland, the greatest encore of Jolson's career was his tours for the U.S.O. during World War II.
About to leave for Algiers, he got an urgent phone call from Mamie Eisenhower, who dictated a note to be delivered to her husband: "Dear Ike: Al will give you this note and give you a sweet kiss from me—and also a swift kick, because you haven't written for so long." Jolson delivered the message to General Eisenhower, commander in chief of the Allied Forces in North Africa. "Well," said Ike, "when you get back home, give Mrs. Eisenhower back that kiss. As for the other ..." Ike bent over, lifted the flap of his jacket and told Jolson to carry out his wife's instructions.