Just before the Jefferson Airplane went on stage in Akron, another rock group urged the 12,000 people in the audience to dance on the neighboring football field of Akron University, despite the fact that it had been freshly seeded. Outside the stadium, kids threw rocks, and Chick Cassady, the Airplane's manager, allegedly encouraged the youngsters to do battle with the police. When the tear gas cleared, the cops had arrested Cassady, the Airplane's Paul Kantner and Kantner's "old lady" Grace Slick, who either attacked the fuzz or--depending on who was telling the story--was attacked by them. The three paid a $1,400 bond and promised to show up for a September trial "because we're not guilty and, besides, this could happen to any other group that comes into Akron."

"I'm not kidding," said South African Golfer Gary Player. "We've had a baby after every one of my major victories." As if to prove his point, Player last month won the Professional Golfers' Association of America championship--his sixth major win--and phoned Wife Vivienne to ask if she was pregnant. "No," replied Vivienne, an answer that soon proved premature. Now, says Player, his record still holds. The couple's sixth child will be along in April.

"I was never Hitler's mistress--though I was dazzled by him, like millions of other Germans. These are nothing but lies," insists Leni Riefenstahl, with thinning patience. As one of Adolf Hitler's favorite actresses and directors, Leni got her biggest break when the Fuehrer told her to make a movie of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The film that resulted was a propaganda classic, but her career as a movie producer in the Third Reich eventually led to two denazification trials (she was cleared). Now London's Sunday Times has hired her to put her 1936 experience to use photographing the XX Olympiad in Munich, and Leni plans no propaganda. "I have always loved the world and all races," she says. "I love the beauty of the human body..."

Underneath the lantern, by the barracks gate,

Darling, I remember the way you used to wait:

'Twas there that you whispered tenderly

That you loved me, you'd always be

My Lilli of the lamplight,

My own Lilli Marlene.

Some thought Lilli Marlene was a respectable girl who was bidding goodbye to a drafted soldier; others suspected that she lounged around lanterns for immoral purposes. No matter. The lament that began as the signing-off tune of Nazi-occupied Radio Belgrade eventually crossed Allied lines, was translated into 42 languages and became the great hit of World War II. German Singer Lale Andersen, whose sensuous, never-never-land tones made the record so popular, is now retired, but last week, at 59, she published her memoirs, recalling her surprise at Lilli's phenomenal success. To commemorate the lamplight girl's international appeal, the publishers threw a party aboard a Russian tourist steamer docked in Vienna on its way to Germany. "If I stayed aboard, I might finally get to Belgrade," observed Miss Andersen. "I've never been there."

Having turned 88, Alexandra Tolstoy, daughter of Leo Tolstoy, was in the mood for reminiscing. "One day we were reading War and Peace aloud," said Miss Tolstoy at her home in Valley Cottage, N.Y., "and father came into the room, and he stood there with his hands inside the belt of his blouse, and he said, 'What's that? It isn't badly written.' He was a vegetarian and a pacifist, but when a mosquito sat on the head of Chertkov [one of Tolstoy's followers], father killed it without a thought. Chertkov turned to him and said, 'Oh, how could you do that, to take the life of an innocent mosquito?' All of us roared with laughter--the narrowness of some of his disciples! But father didn't laugh. He was very confused and that made us laugh still more."

Temperamental Actor Mickey Rooney went to court in Santa Monica, Calif., to gain custody of four of his children, who have been living with their grandmother since the 1968 death of their mother, Barbara Thomason, the fifth of Rooney's seven wives. The judge asked Rooney if he had a bad temper. Said Rooney, identifying himself as a member of the Science of Mind Church: "Yes, but I curbed it through Christ."

"It's going to be fun, folksy and down to earth," said Georgia's Lieutenant Governor Lester Maddox. He was plugging his new TV variety show, Lester Maddox--U.S.A., a combination of God, patriotism and dancing girls. The first installment, to appear on an Atlanta station this week, features Prophetess Jeane Dixon, Singer Johnny Desmond, and Maddox and his wife warbling Let Me Call You Sweetheart to the accompaniment of a player piano. "I feel that I have God-given talent in the public relations field," declared Maddox. "I am able to attract people to listen. God has blessed me with this."

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