COUSY COZY WITH COSA? headlined the impish New York Daily News, and the thought alone was enough to appall the millions who have admired Bob Cousy, 39, onetime basketball superstar with the Boston Celtics and now coach at Boston College. The question arose from an article in LIFE tying Cousy to a Springfield, Mass., saloon owner and syndicate gambler named Andrew Pradella. In an emotional, 70-minute press conference, Cousy choked and sobbed as he admitted that he had known Pradella well for 13 years, had played golf with him and seen him socially. He had learned for the first time of Pradella's connections in 1962, said Bob, "but what do you do when someone comes up and tells you a good friend is a gambler? I suppose I'm guilty of an indiscretion, but that's all I'm guilty of."
He'd like to put Red China in the U.N., settle the Viet Nam issue in the Security Council, and "cut out social security to people like me and give it to the people who need it." Sounds kinda pinko, eh? It was Alf London speaking, the unreconstructed prairie Bull Mooser who went on to become Governor of Kansas and Republican candidate for President in 1936. Laughing fit to bust britches, Landon tossed out a bagful of prickly pears as he celebrated his 80th birthday in Topeka, including a couple for today's Republicans: "They've got to quit kicking labor in the pants; they've got to quit kicking farmers in the pants." As for the notion that he had somehow turned leftist, Landon snorted: "What was the old Bull Moose keynote? 'Pass prosperity around.' What's the difference between that and the welfare state?"
Even if it is for the purpose of attending his first one-man art show, the trip from his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif., to Paris is a long one for a man of 75 to make alone. So Jovian Pornographer Henry Miller (Tropic of Capricorn) will take along a traveling companion—Jazz Singer Hoki Tokuda, 29, who met him at the pingpong table 18 months ago, and will become the fifth Mrs. Miller in time for the journey. Though he is sanguine enough about the marriage, Henry has the yips about his untutored abstract watercolors, which have taken up so much of his time in the past three years that he has stopped writing. "Wait till the French critics tear them apart," Miller moans. "They'll only forgive me because they love me as a writer."