Home from a tour of the Philippines, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, 81, who had his differences with the last Democratic President, received an unexpected invitation to a White House luncheon with a bipartisan body of Government leaders. After President Kennedy praised MacArthur for his "triumphant" tour, the general thanked the President for making him "feel a part of the current scene." Later the vigorous vintage soldier offered his impressions of the onetime sailor in the White House: "He seems to have changed very little since he was one of my PT-boat commanders in the Pacific war. He was a good one, too—a brave and resourceful young naval officer. But, judging from the luncheon he served me today [pièce de résistance: Cornish hen; dessert: omelette surprise]," added MacArthur, "he is living somewhat higher now."
While preparing for a concert series at Los Angeles' Pilgrimage Theater, aging (60) but unbowed Violin Virtuoso Jascha Heifetz commented bitingly to the press on his seeming lack of interest in modern compositions. "Yes, I play them occasionally," said he. "And for two reasons. First, to discourage the composers from writing any more, and secondly, to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven."
Breasting the tides of public life, British Labor Party Leader Hugh Gaitskell, 55, has been known to take his mind off political worries by acquiring an occasional painting. Last week a London gossip columnist delighted in detailing a recent Gaitskell purchase: a nude painting of attractive Lady Coldstream, 26, sometime model and fulltime wife of Fine Arts Professor Sir William Coldstream, 53. The painter, Anthony Man. labored to defend the conservative nature of Gaitskell's buy. "Mind you," said Man, "it's not a nudey nude of the 'Oh, I'm shivering because it's cold' type. It's a side view, really a very discreet affair."
The French cuisine of the New Frontier may have claimed a Republican victim. Shortly after Jacqueline Kennedy's Mount Vernon fête champêtre (TIME, July 21), Senate Minority Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen, 65, a cornbred Illinoisan, checked into Bethesda Naval Hospital for treatment of a reactivated peptic ulcer that had been quiescent for many years.
In a will probated in Los Angeles, the late electronics trailblazer, Dr. Lee de Forest, bequeathed $1 apiece to his three daughters, and very little more for his only other heir, fourth (and last) wife Marie Mosquini. The "Father of Radio" —whose 1906 invention of the audion tube had also made possible long-distance telephony, talking movies and television —had burned out his fourth fortune and wound up with $1,250.
Last spring Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy caused a stir at Washington's blueblooded Metropolitan Club when he learned that a fellow member, George Cabot Lodge, 34 (son of Henry Cabot Lodge), had been prevented from inviting to lunch George Weaver, who is 1) young Lodge's successor as Assistant Secretary of Labor, and 2) a Negro. But last week, though notably reluctant to discuss the episode, the Metropolitan Club had admitted Lodge and Guest Weaver to its once segregated sanctum.