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Never one to turn down a challenge, Criminal Trial Lawyer Edward Bennett Williams has defended the likes of Joe McCarthy, Adam Clayton Powell, Jimmy Hoffa and John Connolly. But his toughest case may lie ahead. At the request of exiled Russian Author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Williams, 56, has agreed to defend imprisoned Soviet Dissident Alexander Ginzburg. "I decided it would be a good and useful thing to do," says Williams. It may also be a mission impossible, since the Soviets are not likely to permit an American lawyer to represent Ginzburg at his as yet unscheduled trial. Undaunted, Williams will seek a visa to visit his client in the Soviet Union and is already busy studying the Soviet criminal code to turn up arguments that can be used in Ginzburg's behalf. In fact, the wealthy Washington lawyer (estimated annual income: more than $500,000) is so fascinated by the Ginzburg case that at a meeting with Solzhenitsyn he did not raise the matter of a fee.
"I hope it won't be another 50 years before we can celebrate like this again," joked a high-spirited Bing Crosby to the audience at Ambassador College in Pasadena, Calif. The Old Showman was onstage with the likes of Bette Midler, Pearl Bailey, Paul Anka, Martha Raye and Rosemary Clooney to tape a March 20 CBS special honoring Bing's 50th year in the business. As he finished his bit, the 72-year-old singer tripped and tumbled at least six feet into the orchestra pit. He was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was treated for a cut on his head and bruise on his bottom, and was pronounced well enough to go home in two days. Always the type to take a fall lightly, Crosby hummed some of the songs from his show while in the emergency room and felt fit enough to chat with Raye, who accompanied him to the hospital. Quipped Bing about his fall: "This was part of the show. I didn't get it right the first time. I'll have to try again." Move over, Chevy Chase.
Muhammad Ali has always seemed a littler larger than life. Now there he is, 9 ft. tall and weighing 1,100 Ibs., in a massive metal portrait that Detroit Sculptor Don Thibodeaux welded from 100 auto bumpers. The shimmering statue, unveiled this week at the National Art Museum of Sport in New York City's Madison Square Garden, delights its subject, who is no more reticent on art than on anything else. "It's perfect," says Ali, "I love it. I'm not that ugly," he continues. "It looks more like a mixture of Joe Frazier and George Foreman, but I'm proud of it. It's an honor for anybody to put that much time and work into something of me." Neither is Ali bothered that the sculptor chose auto parts to memorialize him. "It says that I'm tough and that I've taken a lot of bumps."