Everybody knows that the back-room politicians who really run things are big and fat and chew cigars, right? And Jesse Unruh, 41, is the back-room boss of California's Democratic Party. So at 5 ft. 11 in., he should weigh about 277 lbs., have a 48-in. waist and leave cigars in shreds. Well, that's just how he was until he decided he didn't like the way the image fit. Or maybe it was the clothes. First, he chucked the cigars, then he cut out drinking and went on a diet. Now he's down to a trim 39-in. waist and a sylphlike 220 lbs., and he aims to shave off 20 lbs. more. Hooted a 190-lb. Republican state legislator: "His loss of weight only parallels his loss of stature in the public eye."

Things were as genteel as could be when Byron De La Beckwith, 43, accused killer of N.A.A.C.P. Leader Medgar Evers, was transferred to Hinds County Jail in Jackson, Miss., after three months in nearby Rankin County Jail. "Glad to see you," welcomed the jailer. "Mighty glad to be here," said Beckwith, comfortably puffing on a cigar and seemingly unconcerned that his trial has just been set for Jan. 27. But even Southern hospitality has to leave off somewhere. When he asked permission to bring his gun collection, his jailers politely refused. Back in Rankin County the sheriff was amazed at the very thought of it: "All he ever had here was his clothes, a typewriter, a card table, a television and his radio."

Look. Up in the vines. It's a bird. It's a plane. It's Sup--. No, wait. It's none other than that good ol' Charlie Brown of the woods, Tarzan, and the hero of the apes (ne Lord Greystoke) is coming back in a new book due in March. Forgotten until recently, Tarzan and the Madman is the 25th in the series, was chiseled out by Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1940, ten years before his death. It tells how a downed pilot who looks like Tarzan has amnesia and naturally concludes that he's the African swinger himself. Throughout the jungle of circumstance, the real Tarzan is pleased to stand up for his amnesiac imitation when the going gets tough. After all, he has his image to think of. He's set for a 1964 TV series.

Those Salvation Army sidewalk bands of organ, trumpet, trombone and tambourine have been dispensing the same melody-worn music since everyone was a child. But times change, and in his first press conference as commanding officer, General Frederick Coutts, 64, told startled London reporters: "I am going to get with it. Oh my, yes. If we want to attract young folk, we have to go where they are, to the coffee bars, to their haunts. I can see us making use of all kinds of music--guitars and banjos, and that sort of thing. If we have to adapt to be understood by the beardies and weirdies, all right, we must. We have to get with it. You dig me?"

Papa Charlie, 74, knows all about pretty young girls and those show-biz types. So it took a heap of persuading before he would allow his eldest daughter (among ten children), Geraldine Chaplin, 19, to set her toe in that direction. But Charlie finally let her enter London's Royal Ballet School in 1961. No sooner was she there than a picture of her in a decollete dress appeared, and Charlie blew his bowler. But daughters have a way of getting around fathers, and Geraldine stayed. This week she gets her biggest role: a four-minute solo as the Persian princess in a new Paris production of Prokofiev's Cinderella. Her costume had Papa popping again, but fatherly pride won out. He has six orchestra seats for the opening.

He left no will, but now a letter has been found in his Moscow apartment describing how British Defector Guy Burgess, who died last August, wanted his estate divided up. Everything is to go to four friends, including Harold Philby, who tipped off Burgess and Donald Maclean in 1951 that the British Secret Service was closing in, then early this year himself fled to Russia. No one is saying whether Maclean was included too. The letter does not constitute a legal will, but Burgess' brother Nigel will nonetheless comply, though the spy's British holdings, worth $17,416, legally belong to the family. "There may be difficulties over transferring it to Russia," says Nigel, "but I shall do what I can."

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