ALY

It would be difficult to dredge one pennyweight's worth of significance from this breathless biography of the late Aly Khan. It is the sort of memorial usually reserved for Hollywood's more available love goddesses. With a He instead of a She, what you have is just as monotonous. The old Aga worried about his belatedly legitimized heir apparent's potential for homosexuality and, soon as physically possible, apprenticed him to an Indian love specialist who taught the art of Imsak. Thus Aly was launched on a meaningless round of bedhopping which spanned a quarter of a century. In his latter days he did take some pitiful degree of pleasure and security from the resulting publicity of such affairs as the Hayworth and Tierney interludes. These are covered here in just about the same shallow depth as the gossip columnists managed. While this does not sink to the level of the Harlow biography, the tasteless speculation is the same. Aly Khan is prime material for a short chapter in a collective biography of Casanovas, preferably by a writer with wit. Mr. Slater is only impressed.