"I told Columbia it's all about these guys who ride motorcycles, take drugs, have a few fights, and get killed," said Peter Fonda, 30, and apparently that was all Columbia had to hear. Now Henry's boy is sitting in the saddle of his customized cycle--with its steeply raked front and ape hanger handlebars--ready to hit the road on it in his new film. "It's called Easy Rider," said Peter. "I play a character known as Captain America," who just races around cutting the roadways to ribbons experiencing "ultimate freedom."

Ever since Conductor Charles Munch died last November, the French Ministry of Culture has been searching for a worthy successor to lead the prestigious Orchestre de Paris. Tradition demands a Frenchman. But quality has now decreed an Austrian: Herbert von Karajan, 60, who is already busy enough as conductor of Salzburg Festivals and the music director of the Berlin Philharmonic. In Paris, the indefatigable maestro will double as music director and conductor, lead the Orchestre in a series of concerts at home, plus several festival appearances and tours of Japan and the U.S. Says he: "I consider the Orchestre a French institution and that it must be directed by a Frenchman in the near future. But until then I put myself entirely at its disposition."

It was the first luncheon in the White House State Dining Room since the Inauguration, and it was in honor of the ladies of the press. Pat Nixon had arranged the room with small tables seating ten each; centerpieces were Jackie Kennedy's vermeil baskets spilling out fresh garden flowers; the china was Lady Bird's eagle and state-flowers design. And just as the guests prepared to nibble their way through delicate chicken crepes and hearts-of-palm salad, who should show up but the President himself. "Just in time to cool our luncheon," quipped Pat, as her husband showed off a valentine he had received from Willie Mae Rogers, the Good Housekeeping executive whose nomination as a consumer consultant had caused such a storm. He then proceeded to read it:

Faces are red Consumers are blue Four days for me Four years for you.

"I was kinda thinking about eight years," said the President, as the assemblage burst into laughter.

The great brown-and-beige Rolls was tooling along at 60 m.p.h. down the autostrada between Rome and Florence when it hit an icy patch on the road. The car slammed into a lane divider, then caromed across the highway and pounded into a wall overlooking a 200-ft. ravine. Just before the crash, the front-seat passenger, Film Director Franco Zeffirelli, flung out his arm in a gallant gesture toward the driver. "My one thought was to save her face," he said later. As it turned out, Driver Gina Lollobrigida picked up no more than a bruise on the left cheekbone of her pretty face. But a broken kneecap required two operations--one to repair the fracture, a second to remove the scars--before the famous gam was as good as new. "I was very lucky," said Gina.

She could call it The Perils of Josephine, considering all the troubles that have plagued her as she has struggled to provide a home for her brood of twelve adopted children. Last year, as the bills piled up, expatriate Negro Singer Josephine Baker, 62, was forced to sell her chateau in the South of France to pay off at least some of the creditors. Even then, the still beautiful songbird refused to leave her nest, and by some maneuverings managed to hang on until December--at which point an old French law that prevents eviction in the cold winter months was invoked, thus assuring her possession until mid-March. But the creditors keep clamoring, and last week most of the chateau's furnishings were sold at auction for $53,-000. Meanwhile, Josephine was making some money herself on a concert tour of Austria. "Buy back everything," she wryly wired her representative, "up to $7,000."

Doctors at Kansas City's Research Hospital issued the bulletin and hastened to add that their patient's condition did not appear serious. Former President Harry S Truman had been brought in at midnight, suffering from intestinal influenza. "His condition is satisfactory, and he is in no discomfort." Next day, he was even feeling chipper enough to get out of bed and read the newspaper. Truman, who has not gone to his office in the Truman Library for the past two years, still keeps up with things at his Independence home. Only the day before, he had worked on a special announcement: Chief Justice Earl Warren would become chairman of the board of the Harry S Truman International Center for the Advancement of Peace in Jerusalem.

For a while, the family's new father was busy flying around the world tending his billions. Now, pressures seem to have eased, and there, enjoying a leisurely Sunday brunch at Manhattan's Trader Vic's, was a beaming Aristotle Onassis, with Jackie and Son John, who amused himself by sneaking swizzle sticks and loading up on fortune cookies. Afterward, the three took a brief stroll in the nippy air, Onassis, as always, shunning an overcoat and young John manfully emulating his stepfather.

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