The stars twinkled once again over the dance floor, and haute coutured fundaments warmed the zebra-striped banquettes as Manhattan's El Morocco reopened its doors to the oglers and the ogled. There were plenty of oldtime international set pieces--Paulette Goddard flashing rubies and diamonds, Hope Hampton flashing silver sequins, Aristotle Onassis flashing Jacqueline. But there were signs, too, that the times they are achanging. A disk jockey has replaced the orchestra. Dinner is a prix fixe $8.50--less than the average tip in the Elmo's of the '30s and '40s--for the new El Morocco is a private, nonprofit club (initiation fee $500, dues $200). When somebody proposed a toast to Elmo's late founder John Perona, at least one young Ms. whispered, "Who's that?"

The rock group called the Mothers of Invention has confronted some harsh necessities in its current European tour. Replacing the instruments and equipment that were incinerated by a fire in France was bad enough. But replacing Lead Guitarist, Singer and Songsmith Frank Zappa is something else again. He will be out for three or four months with a compound leg fracture and other injuries received when an unappreciative music lover in London jumped up and threw him off the stage.

The problem of what Mrs. Santa Claus looks like was finally solved when Martha Mitchell joined in a telethon to raise money for Washington's Children's Hospital. Though she had been expected to stay only ten minutes or so, she hung onto the phones--sometimes four at once--for a full hour, answering questions, mostly from children. Sample: "What do you feed Santa?" Mrs. Santa's answer: "Claus food."

Noting U.S. magazine pictures of Jesus freaks with I LOVE JESUS on their sweatshirts, Pope Paul VI mused in his general audience about these "curious and bizarre signs" of interest in Christ. "How all this happens cannot be explained," said the Pope. "But many attitudes of this paradoxical youth create a fashion that spreads with the speed of an epidemic. May it be that the time has come for a Jesus slogan?"

It was a put-on that anyone could see through. As the notorious Lady Caroline Lamb, whose affairs with Lord Byron and the Duke of Wellington enlivened England a century and a half ago, Actress Sarah Miles wears a dress of pure gossamer in her new movie Lamb. "One way or another," she says, "I've been naked in just about all my films--by now I've got a veteran pair of breasts. But I'm still not comfortable flashing them around. Although they seem well received." Sarah's husband, Robert Bolt, writer-director of Lamb, was more detached. "I suppose cynics will say that naked breasts are good for box office--and they are," he observed. "But these are naked breasts with a dramatic purpose."

It was win a little, lose a little for Ballerina Natalia Malcarova, 30, who defected from Russia last year and joined the American Ballet Theater. She won a fiance, Vladimir Rodzianko, who had helped her defect and left his wife and two children to be her manager. But she lost the chance to dance before Queen Elizabeth II at the Royal Ballet's gala when she tore a muscle in her thigh.

For the second time running, Good Housekeeping magazine's annual poll to determine the Most Admired Women named Rose Kennedy and Mamie Eisenhower as No. 1 and No. 2. The rest of the top ten: 3) Novelist Pearl S. Buck, 4) Actress Patricia Neal, 5) First Lady Patricia Nixon, 6) Israeli Premier Golda Meir, 7) Ethel Kennedy, 8) Actress Helen Hayes, 9) Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, 10) Princess Grace of Monaco. The Most Admired were chosen by the magazine's 1,000-member consumer panel from a list of 28, which included Jacqueline Onassis, up to 19th from 23rd.

"We're not snobs," said John Lennon. "We don't mind mixing with straights." With his wife Yoko Ono, the ex-Beatle was on hand for a party given by ex-U.N. Ambassador Charles W. Yost and ex-Saturday Review Publisher Norman Cousins for soon-to-be ex-U.N. Secretary-General U Thant. Borrowing Folk Singer Pete Seeger's guitar, Lennon stepped up to the mike with Yoko to give out with a peace song he had written. Excerpt: "Imagine no countries/ nothing to kill or die for/ no religion too./ Imagine all the people/ living for peace." U Thant put it differently. "The single most important impediment to global institutions," he said, "is the concept of 'my country, right or wrong.' "

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