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Patriot Bob Hope celebrated his 71st birthday as near as he could get to the trenches. Playing host at a $100-a-plate dinner for the U.S.O. in his old home town of Cleveland, Hope attracted the top brass: former Secretary of the Army Elvis Stahr and former Army Chief of Staff William C. Westmoreland, who described Bob as "the man who proudly waved the flag for us." Hope briefly touched on Watergate: "I passed the Lincoln Memorial the other day, and he was wearing dark glasses." But still, old friend Richard Nixon had sent his congratulations. Hope stoutly defended the President's deleted expletives. Growled Bob: "I've used fouler language than that every time I tip my caddie."
Peripatetic Sam Yorty, 64, who spent much of his twelve-year tenure as Los Angeles mayor out of town, has finally found a job that keeps him home. Every weekday from 7 to 10 a.m., Sam fields calls from his former constituents as host of a talk show on radio station KGBS. Sam is most sympathetic to disgruntled conservatives. "Most of the people who cause trouble are high on pot," he said last week. Acknowledging that his hours are tough, Yorty, who is paid $ 1,000 a week, hopes to have a studio at home by the end of the year so he can broadcast in his bathrobe. Nothing would induce him to go back into politics: "I'm closer to the people now than I was when I was mayor."
"It's only when you show an animal you're afraid that you lose control," said Actor Peter Lawford with bravado. He was preparing somewhat nervously for his first scene with the 275-lb. lioness Elsa. On location in Kenya for a fall TV series based on the Joy Adamson book and movie Born Free, Lawford and Elsa played amiably together before the cameras. Afterward Lawford rated the gentle lioness above the other animal stars he has worked with. Among the worst, he said, was Lassie. "She was checked into a two-bedroom suite and accompanied by a whole retinue—sort of like a small Frank Sinatra unit."
Paris-born Maurice Girodias, 55, has been working as a publisher in Manhattan for seven years on a business visa. In and out of the U.S., he recently learned from the U.S. Immigration Service that he will be deported on June 15. Apparently, he told officials he would be traveling outside the U.S. again in January. He is now considered an illegal alien because he failed to do so. But Girodias—who made his reputation in the '50s in France by publishing English-language books such as Lolita and The Naked Lunch, which were banned in the U.S. and Britain—believes that the real reason for his deportation was a "poison-pen letter" received by the State Department. "A patriot" accused him of publishing a "vile, pornographic book" entitled President Kissinger. Due out in July, it is a fanciful account of Kissinger's progress from Harvard professor to first President of the World, spanning such cataclysms as a Middle East war, a second U.S. Civil War, and a vast African upheaval—along with restrained glimpses of Henry's romantic entanglements. Girodias, who only needs to pay $10 to renew his visa, instead petitioned Kissinger on his own behalf, describing the book in a letter as "a vibrant homage to your political institutions."