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It was a microbopper parable out of Oliver Twist. There on the Queen Mary, docked at Long Beach, Calif., was little Lena Zavaroni, 10, the Scottish youngster with the big Garland voice who topped the Common Market charts in 1973 with her recording of Ma, He's Making Eyes at Me. As she gyrated with prepubescent salaciousness at the end of a U.S. promotion tour, her managers Phil and Dorothy Solomon looked on with satisfaction. "Our biggest problem in England," said Phil, "is the antiquated work laws for children. Why, Lena can only give 40 performances a year." Noting that in the U.S. laws are more liberal, he predicted that "by fall Lena will probably be living in Los Angeles." Lena is enjoying what may turn out to be a short career. The Solomons have refused her singing lessons because they fear training would remove her voice's earthy appeal. Thus Lena is in danger of losing her voice entirely, a fate that befell another Solomon prodigy, Neil Reed, a twelve-year-old who apparently started croaking after a mere eight months. However, said Phil, "girls' voices are supposed to hold up longer than boys'."
Two parish priests take in a broken-down movie actress and—bingo!—pretty soon she stars at a benefit for them. Next week in Manhattan, blonde dynamo Betty Hutton, 53, who hurtled through some 20 musicals in the '40s and '50s, will be the big-name attraction at a $50 and $100 a plate dinner to raise money for St. Anthony's Church in Portsmouth, R.I. On hand for the occasion will be some 300 of her friends and admirers, including Arlene Dahl, George Jessel and Kate Smith. Betty had fetched up on the rectory doorstep last February, stone-broke and despondent about four divorces and a dead-end acting career. Taken on as an unpaid cook-housekeeper by Fathers Peter Maguire and James Hamilton, she wasted no time at all bouncing back. "She's lost none of her zip," said Father Maguire, adding proudly, "She does a tremendous thing with lamb." Baptized a Lutheran, Betty recently converted to Roman Catholicism, and she has wryly christened her hit breakfast recipe, oatmeal topped with Cool Whip, "Catholic cement."
Hello, Ethel. Most patrons of Manhattan's Roosevelt Hospital Gift Shop do a double take when the auburn-haired saleslady hands them their change. Pressed, she admits, "Yes, I'm Ethel Merman." Keeping her Klaxon mute, Ethel does not even hum as she bustles about the shop, straightening rows of candy bars and selling cookies. But, say admiring fellow workers, "she's definitely improved sales." Enlisting as a volunteer when her mother was hospitalized at Roosevelt eleven months ago, Ethel was first a patients' escort, then joined the gift shop. Now she comes in at least once a week—her other engagements, such as a concert tour with Carroll O'Connor permitting. "She's a great wrapper," says the shop's manager. Belts Ethel: "I'm lousy at corners." Then Nonsmoker Merman confessed her only vice: an innocuous form of sniffing. At the cupboard where the cigarette cartons are stored, she inhaled happily. "It smells just like a Dunhill humidor," she said.