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The home-team lineup for the afternoon's floor-hockey game at Manhattan's Felt Forum read like the New Frontier Ladies' Auxiliary: Ethel Kennedy, Eunice Shriver, Pat Lawford, Jean Smith, Althea Gibson and Carol Channing. Arrayed against that formidable phalanx of palestral pulchritude in the sixth annual Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation Special Olympics was a team of mentally retarded children, beneficiaries of the foundation. Team Scribe Barbara Walters described the contest: "I was a little nervous at first, but I noticed that Eunice was out of breath and I wasn't. And you know what good athletes those Kennedys are. Before the game Eunice told us, 'Do your best and just remember, if you lose, it's only a national disgrace.' " They lost 3-2.
Argentina's ambassador to the U.S., Alejandro Orfila, decided to throw the ultimate tango party. So last week he invited 170 guests, including Vice President and Mrs. Gerald Ford, Attorney General and Mrs. William Saxbe, and former U.S. Ambassador to Argentina and Mrs. Henry Cabot Lodge. The whole party was beamed live via satellite to television viewers in Argentina. They saw Ford stump stiffly through what looked less like a tango than a gringo foxtrot. "Mrs. Ford has been hoping for about 26 years that I could tango," he said. "We're still working on it." The nation's honor was upheld, however, by White House Secretary Rose Mary Woods, who has lately distinguished herself by some fancy footwork off the dance floor. She glided faultlessly through the complicated rite with a number of partners. The music was live; after all, who would want a tango interrupted by a gap in the tape?
The makings of a coalition government were assembled last week in London's historic Whitehall Banqueting House. Prime Minister Harold Wilson, along with former P.M. Edward Heath, Liberal Party Leader Jeremy Thorpe, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Lord Avon (Anthony Eden) joined some 200 other guests to honor Lady Spencer-Churchill on her 89th birthday. After toasts with Sir Winston Churchill's favorite Pol Roger champagne had been exchanged, a fragile-looking Clemmie, who has been mostly confined to a wheelchair since breaking her hip two years ago, was helped to her feet by Grandson Winston, M.P. for Stretford, Lancashire, to announce a fund-raising drive for Cambridge's Churchill College and to sponsor traveling scholarships. To launch the "1 million pounds from 1 million people" campaign, she dropped a crisp pound note into the silver bowl presented to the newlywed Churchills in 1908 by Prime Minister Asquith's Cabinet. Remembering Churchill in what would have been his 100th year, Clemmie said quietly, "I think that Winston really did stand a head and shoulders above his contemporaries.