No joke: Who’s the greatest comic star...

No joke: Who’s the greatest comic star of all? It’s Charlie Chaplin, says George Burns, in his new, first-person history of show business, “All My Best Friends.” He once told Groucho Marx that he thought Chaplin was the superior comic, so offending Groucho that “We weren’t friends for a long time,” Burns says, though he laughs about their differences now. “I’m really not the greatest, but I’m one of the boys,” he says.

Preppie sapling: President George Bush visited his prep school alma mater, Phillips Academy, and planted a tree Sunday, just as President George Washington did 200 years earlier while visiting with Samuel Phillips, founder of the elite, upper-crust school. Alluding to the misfortune that befell a sapling he had planted earlier this year in North Dakota, Bush, who was in the Class of ’42 and acquired the nickname “Poppy” while at the school, quipped: “I hope this one makes it.”