The Press: These Charming People

Taking off on vacation last month, the society gossip columnist of the Washington Times-Herald dashed off a cryptic farewell to her readers: "When I get back I'll be a CHANGED woman."

Last week her column reappeared with the byline shortened from "Austine Cassini" to just plain "Austine." As the Times-Herald did not bother to explain, Austine ("Bootsie") Cassini had married William Randolph Hearst Jr.—and she did not think she should trade on his name.

For madly hatted, picture-pretty Austine ("Bootsie") McDonnell Cassini Hearst, 28, the new byline was to be the least of many changes. This week the newlyweds will settle down, after their fashion. They will spend half of each week in the Waldorf Towers in Manhattan, where Bill Hearst publishes his father's Journal-American and the American Weekly, and the other half in a house on swank Decatur Place in Washington, where Bootsie will pursue her career.

She first took over the Times-Herald column, "These Charming People," when Columnist Igor ("Ghighi") Cassini, her first husband, went off to war. She kept it when Cassini became the Journal-American's "Cholly Knickerbocker" three years ago. (Cholly waited until last week to mention Bootsie's new name. And Bootsie, say friends, is miffed because Ghighi remarried before she did.) When she tried to syndicate the column, her boss, the late Mrs. Eleanor Medill Patterson, said no. But now the lid was off: Washington newsmen expected Bootsie to be syndicated throughout the Hearst chain. And fellow gossip Danton Walker even predicted that she would show up high, on the crosstrees of Hearst's Town & Country's masthead.

In one of her honeymoon columns last week, Bootsie welcomed another newcomer to the Hearst fold. Cobina Wright Sr., veteran Hollywood hostess, had signed up with The Chief to do a column about what she knows best—celebrities. It started last week (without a byline for the first few days) in the Los Angeles Herald & Express, and is ghostwritten by bespectacled Charles Gentry, onetime drama critic for Hearst's Detroit Times. "I'll write about, famous people, both inside and outside the U.S.," Cobina told a reporter. "After all, my dear, I've known just about everyone."