People: Sep. 15, 1961

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A strong candidate for inclusion in Queen Elizabeth's next Honors List. Rex Harrison, 53, had grown so touchy about his associations that he backed out of a play in which his part obliged him to denounce democracy as "disgusting." Fearful that the iconoclasm of his lines might alienate Buckingham Palace ("I don't want to be in anything subversive") and discouraged by lukewarm critical reception, Harrison announced that he would abandon Nigel Dennis' August for the People by mid-month. Among the lesser troupers who will be made jobless by Harrison's decision was the gifted actress who portrayed his mistress Rachel Roberts, 33, daughter of a Welsh Baptist minister and favored traveling companion of aspiring knight bachelor Harrison.

When London reporters insisted on raking over his part in planning the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan's visiting Air Defense Force chief, General Minoru Genda, 57, incautiously blurted: "I have no regrets." As his British Air Ministry hosts froze, blunt General Genda ("You must remember that in these things I speak as a soldier") hastily offered a retraction. "Yes, I do have regrets," he confessed. "We should not have attacked just once—we should have attacked again and again."

The two-year romance between Karim Ago Khan, 24, spiritual leader of 20 million Ismaili Moslems, and Anouchka von Meks, 19, pert French-bred daughter of a German clothier, went briefly on the rocks. Bound for Sardinia in Karim's 15 ton cabin cruiser Taara, the pair suddenly found themselves lodged high and wet on a well-marked reef near Corsica's Gulf of Ajaccio. After the Taara was towed ashore, the Harvard-educated prince was informed by a local yachtsman that a French naval yard near by had facilities to repair the boat's mashed propellers, "but they won't help you because it's a military base." Karim's response—"I am Prince Karim, the Aga Khan"—changed the tune, and next day, with the Taara seaworthy once more, Karim and Anouchka decided wouldn't it be lubberly to try again, and throttled off into the Mediterranean sun.

Faithful to the intentions of Architect Eero Saarinen, who died fortnight ago at 51, his partners will move the offices of Eero Saarinen & Associates from its longtime headquarters in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., to Hamden, Conn., sometime next month. Still on his drawing boards in Bloomfield were the daring, Finnish-born form giver's final designs, among them plans for a 37-story Manhattan headquarters for the Columbia Broadcasting System. "Eero was especially excited about this design," recalled Saarinen Partner John Dinkeloo. "He felt he was going back to the tradition of Louis Sullivan and making a step forward from that dramatic and optimistic moment in the design of tall buildings."

A veteran of four previous husbands in 22 years, Love Goddess Rita Hayworth, 42, tearlessly shed the latest incumbent, Writer-Producer James Hill, because he was disparaging ("He said I was not a nice woman in too loud a voice") and aloof ("He would come home and go straight to his room").