On the 17th anniversary of its D-day liberation from the Nazis, the Norman village of Sainte-Mere-Eglise had a distinguished visitor: U.S. Ambassador to France James Gavin, better known locally as deputy commander of Matt Ridgway's hard-nosed 82nd Airborne Division, which liberated the little town of 1,261 to screen the Allied beachhead during the Normandy landings of 1944. Said the ambassador as he clambered out of his official Cadillac last week for a nostalgic slog toward the sea: "I wouldn't have recognized anything in a car. Last time I used this road, I was crawling on my stomach."

After a concert at U.C.L.A.'s first International Music Festival, frail, limping Igor Stravinsky, 78, was greeted by the Soviet delegation. Although one of the visitors had been a Stalinist cultural commissar when Stravinsky was blasted as a "decadent bourgeois," the meeting became a chattering, congenial gabfest, and the famed composer was invited to make his first visit to his native land since he left in 1914. Stravinsky tentatively accepted, but as his wife explained, "He is worried that he will become too emo tional when he returns to Russia."

"New York," the city's Convention and Visitors Bureau heard itself say for the eighth straight year, "is a summer festival." As the humidity mounted on the sticky streets, the egregious slogan was resurreced at an air-conditioned Waldorf-Astoria luncheon, and a new queen was anointed by the mayor. Unable to locate a sinuous native girl to lend a straight face to the propaganda, the Visitors Bureau tapped radiant California-born Model Peggy Jacobsen, 22, summoned its hard-selling ex-president, Midtown Merchant Bernard Gimbel, to seal the deal with a kiss. Whatever his pitch may be, this was one time Gimbel would tell it to Macy's--along with everyone else.

Veteran Vatican observers noted a few unusual aspects about the initial state visit of Belgium's austere and pious Queen Fabiola, 32. The white gown and veil she wore instead of the accustomed black was easily explained: she had asked Pope John XXIII for the ancient privilege of Roman Catholic queens. The reason for her other departures from the past --forgoing the protocol-prescribed trek up the Noble Staircase in favor of an elevator ride to the second-floor apartment of the Pope, failing to join her husband King Baudouin, 30, for the traditional call on the Vatican Secretary of State--also became clear the very next day: the Pope personally confirmed rumors that the shy, slim queen is expecting a child.

Ever since the announcement of Princess Margaret's pregnancy, most Britons expected Queen Elizabeth II to award a title to the baby's commoner father, Antony Armstrong-Jones. But although she honored 2,300 of her subjects on last week's annual list--including a dance-band leader, a mailman, a motorcycle racer and a lighthouse keeper--there was nary a mention of the Queen's brother-in-law.

During a 1:30 a.m. strategy meeting in his hotel suite, hulking, hard-running James P. Mitchell, 60, New Jersey's Republican gubernatorial candidate, crashed to the bathroom floor, broke his left leg in two places. Facing three weeks of hospitalization and the rest of his campaign on crutches, Mitchell turned the accident into a good break, collected sympathy along with signatures on the cast, and prepared to run as hard as ever via tape recordings and telephone hookups.

Back to stir for a year and a day went Bernard Goldfine, 70, onetime gift-giving crony of ex-Presidential Aide Sherman Adams. The Boston textile tycoon, who served three months for contempt of court last summer, was also fined $110,000 on a tax-evasion conviction, put on five years' probation with two requirements: payment of an estimated $5,000,000 in back taxes, and detailed explanation of his disposition of $600,000, said to have been handed to political pals.

Frank Sinatra's midnight opening at the Sands Hotel in Vegas was more than the usual Clanbake. Attending, along with his abrasive mixture of court jesters, were the President's sisters: Pat Kennedy Lawford and Jean Kennedy Smith. But the emissaries from Washington were upstaged by another newcomer, Marilyn Monroe, who sat in thrall at ringside, and was Frankie's date after the show. Denying the inevitable rumors, Marilyn remembered her lines. "Yes," she confided to the press, "We've been together five or six times, but we're just friends. Friends," she continued, thoughtfully, "are a girl's best friends."

"I kill myself for artists. The hell of it is I hate them," muttered Copper Heiress Peggy Guggenheim, 63, as she reminisced about the many hungry artists she has subsidized over the years. Last week, as angry as ever, Patroness Guggenheim claimed that the late Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock had turned out paintings on the side during the penniless years when she had been paying him $300 a month for his entire output (except for one picture per year). Her response: a law suit against the artist's widow, Lee Krasner Pollock (herself a highly regarded abstractionist), demanding either the paintings or the proceeds from the alleged moonlighting operations, plus $122,000 in damages.

After surveying the planetarium and bell tower he gave to the University of North Carolina, Multimillionaire Alumnus John Motley Morehead, 90, turned his attention to another of his campus contributions: the school's 135 Morehead Scholars. Mustering those about to graduate--each of whom had enjoyed a four-year, $5,000 grant--Union Carbide Engineering Consultant Morehead (who still commutes frequently to the company's Manhattan headquarters from suburban Rye) treated them to a brief bit of his practical philosophy: "Money doesn't bring happiness, but it helps to quiet the nerves.'

While readying its list of female names for the upcoming hurricane season, Miami Weather Bureaucrats nominated Anna for the first storm, said that succeeding twisters would be called Betsy, Carla, Debbie, Esther, Frances, Gerda, Hattie, Inga, Jenny, Kara, Laurie, Martha, Netty, Orva, Peggy, Rhoda, Sadie, Tanya, Virgy and Wenda.

After 23 years, one of the longest terms ever run up by a metropolitan U.S. mayor, Atlanta's William B. Hartsfield, 71, announced his impending retirement. Leaving behind a smoothly-operating, patronage-free bureaucracy, Democrat Hartsfield will probably be longest remembered for his notable progress in the field of civil rights. He added the first Negroes to the police force in 1948, brought the 1951 N.A.A.C.P. convention to Atlanta (addressed one session personally, using the almost-unheard-of salutation: "Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen . . ."), desegregated the city's golf courses in 1956, recently ended taxicab segregation. Last week, as he discussed his departure, puckish Baptist Hartsfield could not resist one final rap to redneck knuckles: a threat to reconsider if the Democratic primary nominates an unworthy successor.

With so many of their number already in Washington, Harvardmen knew where to look for their next alumni association president, elected CIA Deputy Director Robert Amory Jr., 46. A tough-minded law professor at his alma mater ('36) and a veteran of Cambridge, Mass., politics as a member of the town school committee, the little-known Bostonian went to work in the planned obscurity of Dullesville in the '50s, left the limelight to his Brahmin Boswell brother, Cleveland (Who Killed Society?) Amory.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.