People, Feb. 18, 1980

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Last week, for instance, he was particularly persuasive as a celebrity auctioneer at a charity sale at Christie's galleries in Manhattan: "Give me a 50, a 50, a 50, let's see a 60, a 65. Don't scratch your nose because I'm very observant." His spiel swiftly sold five lots of porcelain objets d'art, raising $1,160 for the World Wildlife Fund. Cronkite said he learned his patter from the Lucky Strike tobacco auctioneers, who were last on radio when he was still a cub wire-service reporter. No matter. Impressed, Christie's Head Auctioneer Ray Perman told him: "If you ever want to work for us, you get very good prices."

On the Record

Gene Saks, director of the upcoming Broadway comedy Save Grand Central: "It's about young white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Isn't it time we had a play about them?"

Ella Grasso, Connecticut Governor, presenting her legislature with a sharply higher-tax, lower-spending budget to cover unexpected deficits: "This will be very brief—bare facts to cover bare bones."

John W. Mazzola, president of Manhattan's Lincoln Center: "Without the arts, New York would be Bayonne, N.J. And I grew up in Bayonne, N.J."