People, Jul. 5, 1971

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"It's not for me—it's for my daughter," insisted American Art Dealer Julius Weitzner, tongue firmly in cheek. With that, he anted up $4,032,000 for Titian's 16th century masterwork, The Death of Actaeon. It was the second highest price ever paid at public auction for a work of art. (Velasquez' portrait of his mulatto assistant brought $5,544,000 last November.) The sale at Christie's in London climaxed last week's record $8,735,580 auction of such Old Masters as Rembrandt, Van Dyck and Veronese. Just who would get Actaeon was not entirely clear. Said Daughter Marjorie: "It will fit perfectly over my fireplace."

West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, who drew admiring glances in his bright plaid swimming trunks during a recent visit to Jamaica, failed to make as much of a splash last week at his annual garden party. Obviously convinced by his own campaign for national economic stability, Brandt eliminated the champagne, the delicate cheeses and the star performer featured in last year's bash. Instead, the 1,200 diplomats, film stars and other guests were faced with an agonizing choice of Bratwurst, Siedewurst, or Landjäger (fried sausage, boiled sausage or smoked salami), plus hamburgers—all served on paper plates and washed down with beer and unpretentious wine. Asked in advance about the menu, a member of the food committee replied laconically: "We have no menu."

"I will not as a writer allow them to jail a publisher without raising a stink," promised Writer Sloan Wilson (The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit). The publisher he was talking about was Ralph Ginzburg, who had just been denied a hearing by the Supreme Court on his three-year prison sentence for sending obscene material through the mail. Ginzburg, 41, is quite capable of raising his own stink—as he demonstrated with his defunct sensation monger Fact (which lost a $75,000 libel suit to Barry Goldwater), not to mention his sex-centered Liaison Newsletter and Housewife's Handbook on Selective Promiscuity. The $10-a-copy magazine Eros, however, which was featured in his conviction, was far more art than pornography—at least by today's standards. "This is the era of the gang-rape of the free press," exploded Ginzburg. "First it was Agnew on CBS, then the Defense Department on the New York Times, and now the Supreme Court on Eros and me."