The jokes about skinny Frank Sinatra disappearing when he stood sideways kicked around for years. Now, of course, the not-as-thin-as-he-once-was man is married to an even wispier creature, Mia Farrow, 21. In Paris to pick up some frocks for her role in a spy film called A Dandy in Aspic, Mia wryly told a New York Times reporter: "I started wearing shifts, dresses without waists, about five years ago. I really have no waist. I'm kind of 20-20-20."

Having refined the French for the past eight years as Charles de Gaulle's Minister of Cultural Affairs, Andre Malraux is now exporting--in the very domestic form of his wife, Madeleine Malraux. A onetime concert pianist who has been playing only for friends since her husband entered government in 1945, Mme. Malraux will give a concert of 17th and 20th century French compositions next month at the University of Texas.

On Oct. 31, 1517, the brilliant Augustinian friar Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg's Castle Church and, in effect, began the Reformation. It was also the beginning of his excommunication by Rome; four years later, Pope Leo X drummed the great heretic out of the church. Now two ecumenically minded men from St. Louis have asked Pope Paul VI if it isn't time to end the grudge. Wrote the Rev. Walter Riess, a Lutheran minister, and Edward Meiners, a Catholic layman: "Your lifting of his excommunication would voice to all Protestants a fresh expression of your openness to Christian unity." The fact is that the Vatican's Secretariat for Christian Unity has already formed a working committee with the Lutheran World Federation. One of the topics is whether Rome should drop its charges against the reformer.

Not all the nation's college students are against their country's stance in the Viet Nam war. Notre Dame's senior class voted to give its annual Patriot of the Year award to General William Westmoreland, 52, the U.S. commander. "You have done me a great honor," Westmoreland wrote from Saigon. "But as you suspected, my schedule will not permit my attendance to accept." And then some of the Fighting Irish took the more publicized view. As soon as the winner was chosen, the student weekly Observer started potshooting: "All that can be said of the selection is that it was in the best tradition of black humor."

His toes were still as twinkly as ever, when Song-and-Dance Man Ray Bolger, 63, opened at the Waldorf's Empire Room in Manhattan. At 160 Ibs., he seemed in wonderful shape, too, until he capered midway through Begin the Beguine and suddenly heard the unmistakable sound of trousers splitting beneath his tails. With a laugh, he flew through the rest of his act, but next day decided to take steps. He trotted over to Saks Fifth Avenue, asked the rather elegant salesman for one pair of men's nylon tricot boxer shorts, pure black. The clerk blanched, then to his own amazement discovered that the store did indeed have one pair of black nylon shorts. "Do you mind, sir, if I ask, why black?" he said. Stiffening, Ray mugged: "I, sir, am in mourning."

"We've got nothing special planned," said Bess Truman. Her daughter Margaret Truman Daniel and four grandchildren did put in a call from Manhattan the night before, but otherwise Bess, who has always hated fuss anyhow, spent a quiet day with Harry in the big white house in Independence, Mo., as she passed her 82nd birthday.

At the Paris press conference, the point was to announce that the musical Coco, spun around Sarbrielie Chanel's half-century haute career in fashion, will be ready for production next fall. But the points all went to Coco herself, who was in the mood to give reporters a rococo little performance about the ups and downs of couture. "This is a lousy time for women," groaned Coco, 83. "Everyone is copying adolescents, and women are dressing more like men. We have lost couture because clothes are designed by men who detest women." After hearing that broadside, Designer Pierre Cardin sniffed: "Mile. Chanel can say all she likes about our hating women. The only thing that matters is that women do not hate us."

"Damn the torpedoes!" roared Rear Admiral David G. Farraqut. "Full speed ahead!" It was a great line, but the fact was that the damned torpedoes (as mines were then called) did give the Union ironclad Tecumseh the deep six as Farragut's fleet went booming into Mobile Bay on Aug. 5, 1864. The Tecumseh sank like a stone to the bottom of the harbor, there to remain for 103 years. Now engineers, working under the sponsorship of the U.S. Navy and the Smithsonian Institution, have located the Tecumseh in 38 feet of water by means of electronic metal-detecting devices. Since all the other Monitor-class Civil War ironclads were either sunk or sold for scrap, the Tecumseh, when hauled to the surface, will be the only surviving prototype of the modern armored Navy vessel.

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