When not brooding over his chilly theologies on film, Swedish Director (The Silence) Ingmar Bergman, 47, has spent the past two winters fussing with a lot of undramatic details as director and chief administrator of Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theater. His name alone would have kept the distinguished house sold out for many more seasons, but last week Bergman reported that running the theater is "beginning to use up too much of my artistic capital." Beginning next July, he will spend all the capital on movies.

Tastefully garnished with green peas and celery, le grand visage stared out at the Japanese people from the cover of a new politico-nudie monthly magazine called Hoseki (Jewels). The outraged French ambassador, Francois Missoffe, complained to Japan's Foreign Office, calling the picture a "grave insult" to the honor of France and President Charles de Gaulle. Hoseki's managing editor Kozaburo Iga explained that his cover, titled "The Secret of Glory," was a "symbolic composite meant to congratulate the French President on his good health and a good healthy appetite." And the glorious girl? Well, said Iga, "she is merely showing her big appetite too." Bon appetit!

While New York City's Mayor-elect John Lindsay, 44, was announcing his appointment of a 49-year-old Democrat, Robert Lowery, to become the city's first Negro fire commissioner at $30,000 a year, the board of elections was offered a tentative tally on what it had cost the Lindsay people to be able to hand out such jobs--roughly $2,539,977 in campaign expenses, v. $2,451,919 in contributions. That left Lindsay's organization with more than $88,000 in bills still to pay. Just the day before, the mayor-elect had announced that he would voluntarily cut back his new salary from $50,000 to $45,000 as a "symbolic" economy gesture, and in the next round of symbolism, Lindsay rode up to city hall on the 15-c- subway.

A nice touch of local color, thought Director Ron Winston, as he lined up the water buffalo. The bewildered beast was assigned to loll around while Hero Hugh O'Brian, 37, went tearing by with two battle companions in a scene from something called Ambush Bay, filming on location in the Philippines. O'Brian swashbuckled past on cue, but then the buffalo ad-libbed by charging the hero, tearing through his combat jacket with its horns, fracturing two of his ribs and leaving him out cold in an irrigation ditch. What a break. As soon as O'Brian gets out of the hospital, they'll shoot the scene where "I bravely get up and shout, 'Come on, I'm all right! Let's keep moving.' "

For months she's been smiling prettily through in public, trying to sell the Dutch people on her engagement to German Commoner Claus von Amsberg. What The Netherlands' Crown Princess Beatrix, 27, says in private sounds a bit different. That's how Liesbeth Lobensteijn, 16, a Hague high school student, told it after she and a group of fellow students paid a visit on the princess. As Liesbeth reported in her school paper: "One of us said, 'Of course you always managed to keep that unbeatable smile,' but the princess answered with a gesture like 'Sometimes I would like to wring their necks.' " Beatrix steamed on, describing a recent beam-and-wave tour: "There they stood, the little scoundrels. Their fists were clenched to throw sacks of confetti right in our faces--hard. The same with the flowers. And then you see the little faces of the kids, with their really mean expressions." Some people thought that was a rather mean expression by little Liesbeth, but Beatrix fell discreetly silent.

"Just sentimental, I guess," Larry O'Brien, 48, said later. The new Postmaster General had received a letter from University of California Senior Delane Roberts, explaining that a birthday package with bedroom slippers, candy and a recording of Come Share My Life had been lost in the mails for eight days on the way to Roberts' girl, Bonnie Bishop, at Utah's Brigham Young University. "If it is not beneath the dignity of your office, sir," pleaded

Roberts, "would you mind writing a personal note of apology to her about the package not arriving on time for her birthday? I wouldn't feel like a dog any longer." So O'Brien shot off a note that got right through to Bonnie, begging "Please forgive us." Bonnie said Larry was "sweet," and Delane said he's going to propose to Bonnie over Christmas vacation.

Luci used to have all the fun, but not any more. Her boy friend, Pat Nugent, 22, was down on the ranch for the holiday weekend all right, but things couldn't have been very gay, with Pat going into the reserves any day now. Lynda Bird Johnson, 21, was doing the giggling for a change as she flew off right after turkey dinner to spend the weekend swimming, fishing and water-skiing in Acapulco, Mexico, with Actor (All the Fine Young Cannibals) George Hamilton, 26. Reporters started talking vaguely about romance, but

Lynda said it would be just "lots of fun," then donned a blonde wig and set out to see how much fun she could have while chaperoned by Daddy's old friends, Mr. and Mrs. Earl Deathe, and four Secret Service agents.

Doggedly on schedule, the caravan started off to take Britain's Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon to New Canaan, Conn., for lunch, when all of a sudden the royal Rolls pulled off to the side of the road. Meg had had it for a while, decided to return alone to Publisher John Hay Whitney's Manhasset estate to get some rest. She needed it. In the next two days she and Tony slogged through rainy Manhattan shopping tours before the last farewell blast, an "American kitchen party" at the Four Seasons restaurant. Next day, "very sad" and very exhausted, Meg and Tony ended the trip that had been splashed all over U.S. front pages for 20 days. London papers, barely interested in the whole thing, wasted little space on their arrival home.

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