It is a pressagent's dream. There are Pop Singer and Composer John Phillips, 37, his first wife, Michelle Phillips, 29, and his second missus, South African Actress Genevieve Waite, 26, all making music for their "family label," Paramour Records. No hanky-panky about it either. Although Phillips, who with Michelle, Cass Elliot, and Denny Doherty founded the Mamas and the Papas singing group in 1965, likes to call his life-style with a giggle "a ménage à trois," the relationship seems to be purely commercial. Michelle and Genevieve are capital investments. "There's something about me that makes women sing," he declared from his Manhattan town house. Said Michelle at her West Coast home: "He keeps us both busy," referring to the fact that she and Genevieve are currently cutting discs of John's songs. Apart from that, she added, "we lead very separate lives."
The U.S. protocol office found itself suffering from an embarrassment of riches. Since Columnist Maxene Cheshire disclosed in May that there were discrepancies in the reporting of gifts received by Pat Nixon and her daughters, jewel boxes all over official Washington have been emptied. Among those hurriedly delivering diamonds, rubies and emeralds to the gifts office were Betty Fulbright, wife of Senator J. William, whose Foreign Relations Committee drafted the 1966 law that does not permit officials or their families to accept gifts worth more than $50. The greatest surprise came when Hubert Humphrey turned in a 7.9 carat diamond estimated to be worth more than $100,000. Presented to Muriel Humphrey in 1968 by Zaire's President Mobutu Sese Seko, along with ten leopard skins from a Somalia official, the diamond has been resting in a Minneapolis safe-deposit box. The skins were sold in 1970 for $7,500, which was given to the Louise Whitbeck Fraser School for the mentally retarded in Minneapolis. Pleading ignorance of the 1966 law, Humphrey said in Washington last week: "At no time did any officer of the State Department or any other agency of Government inform me that gifts received by me or members of my family should be placed in the custody of the department."