Chain Store Scion Huntington (A. & P.) Hartford, 48, quietly mimeographed word that he has acquired the bulk of a coral isle in the Bahamas, just off the city of Nassau. On Philanthropist Hartford's program: to develop the place as a vacation paradise for "people of quality from all walks of life. There will be no automobiles, no roulette wheels, no honky-tonks." What "Hunty" Hartford wanted most to create was "an atmosphere of cultural enjoyment.'' It seemed a pity that his latest good work will be located on grounds that some may shun for esthetic reasons: good old Hog Island.

The longtime (1932-57) chairman of the U.S. Communist Party. William Z. Foster, now 78 and so ill that he has never been tried on his 1948 indictments for conspiracy, asked a Manhattan court to lift the raps on him or let him go to the Soviet Union anyway. His reason: medical treatment costs too much in the U.S.

Finished with his acting debut as the judge in the film version of the bestselling Anatomy of a Murder, courtly old (68) Boston Barrister Joseph Welch good-naturedly allowed: "They lied to me. They told me when I became an actor that it would be fun and easy. Fun it was. Easy it was not. The only way I could be persuaded to go back into films would be if someone wrote a part that would fit me as well as this."

Cinemactress Kim Novak winged back to the U.S. from a 30-day conquest of Europe, where her name was linked with enough swains to make a chain. On the honors list: Cinemactor Gary Grant

("We speak the same language"), Cinemactor Anthony Quinn (whose wife Katherine was not amused by a report that he bussed Kim feelingly in a Paris marketplace).

After 59 years, eleven Broadway musicals and 31 movies, twinkle-toed Hoofer Fred Astaire published his highly informal, do-it-yourself autobiography titled (on Noel Coward's suggestion) Steps in Time (Harper; $4.95). More a theatrical log than a self-portrait, the book brings Astaire from his Omaha boyhood (papa was a brewer of Austrian descent) to the pinnacle of popular dancing, a position he has enjoyed for half his life. Astaire fans will be elated to hear that the end of his career is nowhere in sight. Writes the mellowing top-hatter: "What is this age bit that goes on about actors and athletes, anyway? . . . For some years I've been looking for the quitting signal . . . the time when the years would simply show too much, even if they photographed me through three lace curtains . . . It's nice to hear, 'How does the old boy do it ... why isn't he falling apart?' And all that jazz ... In fact, I feel a lot better than when I was belting around at eighteen."

Her beauty crisply framed in a black veil, Monaco's Princess Grace, accompanied by Prince Rainier III, made her second Vatican visit since the royal wedding. The couple were received in a 35-minute' state audience by jovial Pope John XXIII, who praised them as good

Roman Catholics, exhorted them to set a Christian example for their subjects in the gambling mecca.

Ever since he saw the Broadway hit. Sunrise at Campobello, New Brunswick's able Tory Premier Hugh John Flemming has thought hard about the New Brunswick island where Franklin D. Roosevelt spent so many summers. Last week Flemming told of a project that he recently proposed to his good neighbor next door, Maine's Democratic Governor Clinton A. Clauson: Why not restore F.D.R.'s old summer haunt, now in slight disrepair, and open it to the public as an international shrine, jointly maintained by Maine and New Brunswick? Clausen's response was favorable: "I'm in perfect sympathy (TM) with the suggestion."

In dead of night, vandals sneaked into a Bridgeport, Conn, cemetery, made off with a marble statue of "General" Tom Thumb (1838-83), whom P. T. Barnum glorified as the most exhibited midget of all time. Swiping the grave marker was quite a feat: the stone Thumb stood atop a 3O-ft. pedestal, weighs 100 Ibs.

Multi-octaved Peruvian Songbird Yma Sumac, happy as a lark, checked into Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana Palace Hotel, registered in the same suite as her manager, ex-Husband Moises Vivanco, who was divorced by her after he admitted that he was the papa of Yma's secretary's twin girls. Diva Sumac's current Latin American tour will take her soon to Brazil's brave new, jungle-fringed capital of Brasilia. There, announced Yma, she will remarry Vivanco, just as if nothing had ever happened. Planting a soulful kiss on Vivanco's lips, Yma broke it off to trill (in a range that extends from shrill soprano to throaty baritone): "We cannot live apart. There's nothing like love!"

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