Flying in from her home in Hawaii, Clare Boothe Luce caught a Philadelphia performance of the Broadway-bound revival of her 1936 hit The Women. Later in Manhattan, dozens of old and new friends, including Senator and Mrs. Jacob Javits, Mrs. William F. Buckley Jr., Author David Halberstam, Director Joshua Logan and his wife, gathered at "21" to celebrate Mrs. Luce's 70th birthday. The party was given by her stepson Henry Luce III and New York City Parks Commissioner Richard Clurman and his wife. Actress Ilka Chase toasted Mrs. Luce for providing "the best 18 months of my life," her starring role in the original production of The Women. Having blown out the one candle on her cake, Mrs. Luce said that she had been "37 years before my time" with the theme of love in the play: "Now even the post office has it on a stamp." Another guest to offer a toast was Journalist-Author Theodore White; he compared the evening to the lyrical impulses of Chinese Tang Dynasty poets, who were able to mix the past and future in such images as "floating candles and wine cups downstream." Said White: "Clare is past and future."

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Olympic Champion Mark Spitz, 23, recently recovered from a case of hepatitis that doctors think he picked up in Munich, has not gone swimming in months. "I don't miss it at all," he says. "It was twelve years of awfully hard work and I got my rewards." One of the rewards -Spitz has signed advertising contracts worth an estimated $5,000,000 -is a $65,000, 39-ft. citron-yellow Ericson motor sailer, which he bought to celebrate his engagement to Susan Weiner, 21, a sometime model and the daughter of a Los Angeles steel executive. "The whole world knows I am getting married on May 6," Spitz boasted, but was uncharacteristically modest about his career in show biz. "I have to be cautious. There are a lot of great actors out there."

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Teeing off for the coed pro-am section of the second annual Colgate-Dinah Shore Winners Circle tournament in Palm Springs, Calif., were Ray Bolger, Glen Campbell, Phil Harris, Rita Hayworth, Robert Stack, Lawrence Welk, George Plimpton and, naturally Dinah. Attention seemed to be focused on the couple that tied for 15th place with Pro Donna Caponi Young and Mrs. Morton Downey. They were Frank Sinatra and Barbara Marx, the estranged wife of Zeppo Marx, a tall, fortyish blonde who has often been seen playing tennis with Spiro T. Agnew. Although Frank and Barbara have been together a lot lately, Sinatra's press agent insisted that there were no wedding plans.

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On his way back to Saigon from the U.S., South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu got the cold shoulder throughout Europe. Britain's Prime Minister Ted Heath decided to helicopter Thieu to a private meeting at Chequers rather than chance an ugly demonstration in Whitehall. In Bonn, 2,500 leftist rioters wrecked the 18th century town hall to protest the visit, while in Hannover, Chancellor Willy Brandt bluntly told a cheering audience: "Some visitors one would rather see leaving than coming." Choppered over Rome, again to avoid demonstrators, Thieu dropped in at the Vatican, where Pope Paul VI urged him to release his political prisoners. Later, at a news conference, Thieu contended that there were only 5,081 "Communist criminals" in prisons in South Vietnam.

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Heisman Trophy Winner Johnny Rodgers, a three-time All-America at Nebraska, also happens to be the Peck's Bad Boy of the Cornhuskers. The fleet-footed running back was sentenced to 30 days in a Lincoln, Neb., jail for driving with a suspended license. Rodgers' lawyer had attempted to get him a work release program at Boys Town, the school near Omaha for orphans and other underprivileged youngsters. But the director, Monsignor Nicholas H. Wegner, seemed to think they had no room for big bad boys. "We don't want him," he said.

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Seven years after the death of English Novelist Evelyn Waugh, his diary -a minor masterpiece of snobbism and malicious observations -is being published in seven installments by the London Observer. In 1930, when Waugh was busy with the social-literary set, he wrote: "After dinner I went to the Savoy Theater and said: 'I am Evelyn Waugh. Please give me a seat.' So they did. I saw the last two acts of Paul Robeson's Othello. Hopeless production but I like his great black booby face." Waugh also noted disapprovingly that Poet Edith Sitwell and her family lived on terms of "feudal familiarity" with their servants. "Come on, one of you's got to go," said the footman, trying to persuade Edith or her reluctant brothers, Osbert and Sacheverell, to go upstairs to visit their mother. After lunching at the Ritz with Noel Coward, Waugh commented: "He has a simple, friendly nature. No brains and a theatrical manner."

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