Hollywood: The President's Week

Last week was a busy one at the Beverly Hills address sometimes called the Clan's White House West. There President Frank Sinatra:

— Got engaged.

— Joined battle with 50 neighbors over his right to establish a private heliport in his backyard.

The engagement was to Actress-Dancer Juliet Prowse, 25, the slim and beautiful South African whom Frankie met in 1959 when they were working together on Can-Can. Since then she has often acted as hostess at his dinner parties, and has been his frequent if not constant companion. "I've had lots of dates with other men," Juliet said candidly last week. "Elvis Presley, for one. But Frank and I have always been mature about our romance. We don't go for this teen-age bit about going steady and all that jazz. Frank and I just enjoy each other."

For his part. Sinatra has been—as they say in the columns—linked with various women in recent months, including Dorothy Provine and Marilyn Monroe. But, said he gallantly last week, "Juliet has been my one romance. She has accepted my proposal of marriage." At a quiet dinner at Romanoff's, he slipped a ring on Juliet's finger—"a beauty." friends reported, "not the usual Hollywood blockbuster." Unmarried since his 1957 divorce from Ava Gardner, Sinatra admitted:

"I'm a little shook." But, he concluded.

"I'm 46 now. It's time I settled down."

One thing he plans to settle down in is a helicopter—on the spacious lawn outside his home in pukka Coldwater Canyon. Some 25 of his neighbors turned up to protest at a hearing in the West Los Angeles city hall. "He's a nighttime person," said a neighbor. "Parties start in the middle of the night and you can hear them through the canyon. The neighbors wake up and spend an irate night. It hasn't been too bad lately, though. But can you imagine how a helicopter would sound taking off from here in the middle of the night?" Decision is pending, but the neighbors' case seems too strong to be denied. As another one put it: "The acoustics in the canyon are better than those of the Hollywood Bowl. There would be a definite noise problem. Every time Frankie spits, you can hear it down at our house."

Juliet may at least put a stop to that.