Rugged Rancher Winthrop Rockefeller, 49, likes to do things the hard way: he worked as a field hand for Humble Oil, a family firm, joined the army as a private (he left as a lieutenant colonel), divorced his wife Bobo when five years of separation and litigation ended in a whopping $5,500,000 settlement, one of the largest on record. Now, following older brother Nelson's lead, Winthrop is jumping into GOPolitics, but with a characteristic twist. As newly elected Republican National Committeeman and party leader of Arkansas, where he has headed the Industrial Development Commission since 1955, he confidently expects to turn a stubbornly Democratic state into two-party territory.
Stung by Drama Critic Walter Kerr's panning of the play based on his novel, A Call on Kuprin (Kerr called it "a great deal of scenery in three acts'"), Welsh-born Novelist and Member of Parliament Maurice Edelman dashed off a disastrously timed letter to the New York Herald Tribune. "It is a pity," huffed Laborite Edelman, "that Mr. Kerr should have been so busy sawing up the scenery that he should have neglected the play—which, after all, is the thing." Unhappily, it wasn't. In the very issue that carried Edelman's letter the Trib carried the announcement that Call was folding after twelve performances.
Forced by his retirement last week to yield the majestic appellation, Geoffrey Cantuar, that he used as Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Geoffrey Francis Fisher deplored the fact that he was reverting to the mundane surname Fisher. "I wish I could have the use of 'Geoffrey, once by divine providence Archbishop of Canterbury and now, by the same divine providence, a bishop only and temporal peer,' " sighed he. "But that cannot be.'' It could not. Even as Dr. Fisher gazed nostalgically across the Thames at the Archiepiscopal Lambeth Palace that was no longer his home. Queen Elizabeth was granting him a life peerage that fixed him forever with the scorned surname. He is now Baron Fisher of Lambeth.
On the prowl for a likely vote getter in next December's Senate elections, the Australian Republican Party went to a promising place. Adelaide's Charles Birk's department store, picked out a $25-a-week salesgirl, broad-shouldered, brunette Olympic Swimming Champion Dawn Fraser, 23. Figuring that her five world records would make her all but unbeatable in swim-conscious Australia, the party invited Dawn to carry its banner but got a polite brush-off. "I understand one of the party's aims is to do away with the royal family." said loyal Monarchist Dawn. "I'm definitely against that. I'm an admirer of the royal family, and after all, I'm a British Empire and Commonwealth Games medalist."
The Los Angeles Times-Mirror Syndicate signed up ex-Vice President Richard M. Nixon to write at least ten articles in the next ten months, gave him freedom with subjects and deadlines, confidently expected newspapers from Europe to Japan to snap up the series.