Time's 40th Anniversary Party: Diversity for Dinner

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In a crowd that had what one columnist called "staggering diversity," ex-prizefighter chatted with industrialist, baseball manager interpreted ideas expressed by theologian, and one U.S. Senator demanded that another yield a beautiful actress. Items: . . . Before dinner Monday night, Joe Louis and Henry Ford II held an animated conversation about the Brown Bomber's days as a 55¢-an-hour assembly-line worker in the Ford Motor Co.'s River Rouge plant back in 1933. "I told Mr. Ford," said Louis, "that I went on a leave of absence and haven't been back since." "We talked about the old 'B' building at River Rouge," said Ford. "I didn't know Joe had two brothers still working there." . . . Senator Barry Goldwater's tuxedo had watered silk lapels in a floral design. "One thing about owning a store," explained Goldwater, whose family operates Goldwaters in Phoenix, "you've got to wear the things that don't sell." . . .

In one of the rooms off the main ballroom, a group of partygoers and a small musical combo surrounded Actor Rex Harrison, My Fair Lady's original Henry Higgins. Head bent forward, brow wrinkled in a characteristic Higginsian expression, Harrison was quietly singing I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face. Once when he muffed the lyrics, he was immediately prompted by his audience.

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About to spear an artichoke with her fork, a diner seated across the table from Diet Specialist Ancel Keys asked: "Do you approve of artichokes?" "Absolutely," replied Keys, downing a glass of polyunsaturated white wine.

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When New York Mets Manager Casey Stengel and his wife Edna arrived, Mrs. Stengel announced: "I'm Mrs. Stengel. We're in baseball." After Theologian Tillich's speech at the Monday dinner, Casey, in his own conversational style, offered his interpretation to the guests at his table. They were bewildered.

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"Don't look behind you, Louella," Mrs. Henry Wallace warned Mrs. Everett Dirksen. "Someone's wearing the same dress you are." Mrs. Dirksen turned, saw a guest wearing the same pink and white flowered gown and said in mock indignation, "I want my money back."

. . . Easing through the crush of persons jamming the Waldorf's four reception rooms, Jack Dempsey said: "This is the toughest fight I've had in a long time." When Comedian Milton Berle introduced Mrs. Dempsey to Mrs. Gene Tunney, he said to the Manassa Mauler's wife: "Your husband knows her husband."

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