The small package was addressed to Singer-Actress Barbara McNair at the Playboy Club in McAfee, N.J., and it had hardly arrived before federal narcotics agents swooped down and arrested her and her husband Rick Manzie for possession of half an ounce of heroin. After their arraignment in Newark, photographers flocked around so persistently that Manzie seized hold of one; then Barbara joined the melee, and it finally took a dozen U.S. marshals to restore peace. Two days later, claiming that her career had been devastated and that many bookings had been canceled, Barbara declared that the whole thing was an inexplicable frameup. "I do not use narcotics of any kind," she said. "I mean, I hardly even drink."

Aside from its 11,649,000 native citizens, the state of Texas claims a number of honorary citizens, including Am Parseghian and Eva Gabor. The latest notable so honored is Spain's Prince Juan Carlos de Borbon, who received a visit from W.H. ("Dub") Jackson Jr., head of a delegation of 80 Baptists arriving for a tour of Baptist communities. "It is heartening in this day of skepticism," said Jackson, "to have [the Spanish] invite our folks to come." As a final gesture, Jackson presented His Royal Highness with a ten-gallon hat and cowboy boots.

"We'll see which one of us he loves more by which song he sings first," said Eunice Shriver as she introduced her guest of honor, Rock Singer Neil Diamond. Eunice and Sister-in-Law Ethel Kennedy had both put in requests at a McGovern-Shriver fund-raising picnic. "This is a terrible predicament--I'm chicken is what I am," Diamond confessed. He tried to escape by beginning with some of his own favorites, then got up enough nerve to swing into Eunice's choice, Sweet Caroline. Ethel responded by creeping up be hind the singer and pouring a cup of beer over his head. Thus prompted, Diamond quickly moved on to his next selection: Ethel's favorite, New York Boy.

Norman Mailer shot dead? Through the rear end? With his pants down? It's all just a bit of fiction, said Alan Lelchuk, author of a soon-to-be-published novel in which one character bears that name and suffers that fate. Libel, retorted the real Norman Mailer in a confrontation. "I wouldn't die with my pants down," said he. "You're the father of us all," Lelchuk protested. "You taught us to go as far as you can with literature." As the meeting progressed, there was "shouting and screaming and yelling," according to one participant, but Lelchuk refused to eliminate the scene. "Lelchuk, I don't ever want to meet you in an alley," Mailer warned, "because if I do, you're going to be nothing but a hank of hair and some fillings." -

In Gorham, Kans., to shoot a new Peter Bogdanovich movie called Paper Moon, Ryan O'Neal carried on devotedly with his newest costar. That was only natural, since she is his nine-year-old daughter Tatum (by his first wife, Joanna Moore). The pair amused a group of school children by performing balancing tricks along a deserted railroad track, and when Tatum earned more applause than her father, O'Neal remarked, "I guess it's natural with her. Her mother was an actress and so was my mother. It's in the family." Asked for her own views on acting, Tatum ventured, "Yes, I like it, but I'd rather play with my kitty, Alley O."

With his attractive wife Hjoerdis on his arm, Actor-Turned-Storyteller David Niven flew into London to plug his autobiography, The Moon's a Balloon, and disclosed that he has nearly finished his first novel, which he calls his "secret project." Next month, armed only with "an absolutely appalling desire to be frightened," he comes to the U.S. for a tour of the college lecture circuit. His topics? "I haven't a clue to what I'll be talking about. I'll just improvise on the spot, I think."

THE TRUTH ABOUT MY MARRIAGE, said the headline of a story in which Joan Kennedy unburdened herself to the Boston Sunday Herald Traveler and Sunday Advertiser. On Ted Kennedy: "I am more in love with him than ever." On rumors about other women: "I am bored to tears with gossip about Ted and his so-called illicit romances. I simply go in and ask him about them and that's all." On rumors about Ted and Amanda Burden: "Pure nonsense. Of course I know Amanda. Not intimately, but we've met at parties." On sympathizers: "I am fed up with people who refer to me as poor Joan."

Outside the Soviet embassy in London, Hayley Mills joined in a demonstration for the liberation of Lyudmilla Prussakova, pregnant Russian Jewish woman who has been arrested several times since she and her husband tried to emigrate to Israel. Said Hayley, 26, now wife of Producer-Director Roy Boulting: "I am doing this for humanitarian, not political reasons. I am expecting a child in January, and I can understand the feelings of any woman who is in the same position."

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