Actors Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn, Arts'32
In a less sombre vein, the 1950s McGill News featured numerous celebrities and up-and-comers in its pages, with photos and stories on the likes of poet and warbler Leonard Cohen, BA'55; actors William Shatner, BCom'52, Hume Cronyn, Arts'32, and wife Jessica Tandy; bridge guru Charles Goren, LLB'22, LLM'23, LLD'72; and the young Princess Elizabeth, who graced McGill with a Royal Visit in 1951 and would soon return to Montreal as Queen of England.
The News of the decade also featured a fascinating story on the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered by a group of Bedouins as they searched for a lost goat in caves overlooking the Dead Sea. In 1953, McGill purchased a portion of the Biblical manuscripts, becoming "the only institution outside of Palestine to own a portion of the [ancient] library." The scrolls were to stay in Jordan for analysis, cataloguing and comparison with other fragments before coming to McGill. But the Jordanian government later decided none of the scrolls could leave the country, and McGill had to abandon hopes of receiving the rare scriptures and settle for a refund of its money.
