As the embodiment of Mitteleuropaeische glamour, Marlene Dietrich seemed an ideal addition to the Kaiserball in Vienna's Hofburg, the winter palace of the Habsburgs. Would she care to come and sing? "Would be thrilled and delighted to accept your invitation," Marlene wrote in reply to her invitation, "but unless you agree to my fee of $35,000, all further correspondence will be meaningless." There was no further correspondence. Had Marlene been a little too, well, worldly? Her pressagent had a fast answer: "When you get Dietrich you get the magic, which costs a lot of money."
During last summer's Munich Olympics, Soviet Gymnast Olga Korbut twirled and flipped spectacularly, then went to pieces and made a disastrous muddle of her second appearance. She wept in shame, and the sports world fell in love with her. Olga recovered and carried home two gold medals. Now it turns out that she is suffering from a slipped disk and has been sent to a spa in the Caucasus for complete rest. "We hope Olga will be able to perform again," says her trainer, "but it is not possible to say when."
Most of the papers auctioned off for $12,500 at Manhattan's Sotheby Parke Bernet Inc. were covered with complex mathematical formulas. According to the scientist who made the catalogue, the figures were comprehensible only to about 250 people in the world. Still, for those baffled by the scientific thoughts of the late Albeit Einstein, there were bits of less technical information to be gleaned: the author of E=m2 ate eggs and drank tomato juice (he spilled some on his work) and bequeathed to history an unexplained (and here freely translated) bit of verse: I shan't be absent, little snookie, Though I am not a sugar cookie; What life has brought you up to now May sweeten the farewell somehow.
What has Gina Lollobrigida been doing the past 2 1/2 years? Traveling incognito all over Italy, she says, hiding from the paparazzi by wearing a wide variety of wigs and stuffing her cheeks with prune pits. "After a while I changed the pits for two buttons," she adds. "My mouth was getting sore." The purpose of all this was to take photographs for a picture book called Italia Mia. A perfectionist, she says she made 2,628 shots of Venice before she picked the three she wanted. All in all, the effort has worn out two cameras and one car, but "with photographs I can say what I want."
"If Florence Nightingale had ever nursed you, Mr. Whiteside, she would have married Jack the Ripper instead of founding the Red Cross." The ailing ogre being scolded by his nurse is of course Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner. Now claiming the role made famous by Monty Woolley was none other than Orson Welles. "The part of Whiteside was written for me," said Welles. "They offered it to me first, but I didn't do it." Thirty-three years later, Welles finally agreed to star in an "updated" TV version. The critics' reactions were as waspish as anything Whiteside might offer: "heavy-handed," "vulgar," "disastrous." Said Welles, a little chastened: "I probably blew it."
Out from durance vile: The Rev. Philip F. Berrigan, paroled, effective Dec. 20, in time for Christmas, after 38 months of a six-year term for raids on draft boards in Baltimore and Catonsville, Md. Berrigan, subsequently accused but acquitted of a "conspiracy" to kidnap Henry Kissinger, recently described himself as "a home-front P.O.W. . . jailed for waging peace." Also released: Samuel L. Popkin, Harvard lecturer, imprisoned for contempt for refusing to tell a grand jury all he knew about the compilation of the Pentagon papers. Freed after a week in jail because the grand jury itself was dismissed, Popkin said he had proved that university professors believe in the First Amendment, but "other than that I'm not sure I proved anything."
"I am delighted to be back--I'm delighted to be anywhere," Ann-Margret told a cheering Las Vegas audience. It was her first stage appearance since she fell 20 ft. from a giant hand-shaped stage set three months ago, suffering five facial fractures, a broken jaw and a broken arm. Along with singing and dancing and sailing aloft on the arms of chorus boys, Ann-Margret joked about her injuries: "If you really want to lose weight, go to the orthodontist and have him wire your jaws shut for six weeks. One of the joys was liquid pizza with anchovies. Or I'd say, 'Bring me another glass of prime rib.' One advantage of the whole thing is that I'm down to 110 lbs. I haven't weighed that since I was a cheerleader at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Ill."
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