Director Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show; What's Up, Doc?) was in Rome, prowling round the Colosseum to do the night shots for his film version of Henry James' classic love story Daisy Miller. As for the lead, she was Bogdanovich's girl friend, Actress-Cover Girl Cybill Shepherd. Bogdanovich is already giving the author of the novel most of the credit for the movie. "Daisy Miller picked me," he explained. "I thought that if Henry James had gone to all the trouble to write a good part for Cybill, I should shoot it."

Opera Star Eleanor Steber, 57, now largely confines herself to concert appearances and to teaching at the Cleveland Institute, Juilliard and the New England Conservatory. But for the American premiere of Benjamin Britten's opera Owen Wingrave, in Santa Fe, N. Mex., the soprano sang the role of the old battle-ax aunt to Alan Titus' young Owen. Letting out all the stops, Steber, done up in Victorian rig, calls her nephew a coward for not following in the family's military tradition. How did it feel to play the heavy for a change? "A character part like this is not new to me," she explained, "because I've always been a character."

As a U.S. Senator, Lyndon B. Johnson drafted the legislation that created NASA. As President, he watched the first Apollo flights take off. Last week in Houston, the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center was dedicated on the 65th anniversary of his birth. In a mood of nostalgia under the hot and sullen skies of Texas, Lady Bird unveiled Sculptor Jimilu Mason's bust of her late husband and received a standing ovation as she quietly recalled her personal memories of the space age: "For us, my husband and me and a small group of guests, the news of Sputnik came while we were at the ranch. We walked along the little river, the Pedernales, that runs in front of our house, all of us eerily aware that a new and unknown element had changed our familiar world."

Brides and grooms float in and out of the paintings of Marc Chagall, 86, like magical lovebirds. In an interview for Women's Wear Daily, the expatriate Russian, who has just opened the Biblical Message Museum of his work in Cimiez, France, talked about Valentina, sixtyish, his French wife of 20 years: "To encounter a woman in your life is a stroke of chance accorded by heaven. I don't think there was a creator who didn't depend on his wife's opinions. Oh, there were some. Mozart was unhappy with his wife. But if the encounter is a success, what does she give? All of life!" Later, "Vava," who watches her husband's work through all of its stages, returned the compliment. "He's always saying charming things like that. He is such an amiable man, a joy to be with."

Elizabeth McAlister, an ex-nun and the wife of Antiwar Activist Philip Berrigan, and Sister Judith Le Femina were shopping at the Sears, Roebuck store near Glen Burnie, Md. When they left, the store's detective said, they took with them, without paying, a $20.99 handheld electric power saw, a 690 package of sandpaper and a 190 package of picture hangers. Charged with shoplifting, the pair gave their address as Jonah House, Baltimore, a commune established by Elizabeth and Philip Berrigan for members of the peace movement. Elizabeth last faced a judge when she was convicted in 1972 of smuggling letters to Berrigan while he was in Lewisburg, Pa., federal prison.

Princess Anne is the first member of the British royal family to visit the U.S.S.R. since the revolution, but she insisted on being treated like an average tovarishch while in Kiev. At the Hotel Moskva on October Revolution Street she exchanges prepaid vouchers for her meals (breakfast: salami and cheese, two boiled eggs, black bread, fig jam, coffee--$1.50). Next week her father Prince Philip and her fiance Mark Phillips will join her and watch her ride in the European equestrian championships. The normally obligatory visit to Lenin's tomb in Moscow has been dropped from Philip's itinerary, perhaps in quiet recognition of the fact that he is a cousin once removed of the late Czar Nicholas II, who was murdered with his family on orders from the Lenin-led revolutionary government.

In the new movie, John the Apostle will be played by a woman and Jesus will meet Mary Magdalene in a brothel and be introduced to group sex. The Love Affairs of Jesus Christ, for which the Danish Ministry of Culture has appropriated some $125,000, is already kicking up an international furor. In Copenhagen, 5,000 youthful Christians marched in protest, and from the balcony of his summer palace in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, Pope Paul spoke forcefully to a group of pilgrims about the "ignoble and blasphemous outrage." Two days later, an outfit called "Catholic Moralists" threw homemade bombs at the Rome residence of the Danish ambassador and left a note calling Denmark "the pigsty of Europe." Meanwhile, French authorities forbade production of the movie near Avignon as planned this autumn.

One of the songs from his new album Innervisions was climbing the charts ("Don't you let nobody bring you down ... God is gonna show you higher ground"), and blind Singer-Composer Stevie Wonder, 23, was recuperating in Los Angeles from an automobile accident. He had been hospitalized for two weeks in Winston-Salem, N.C., but had retained his usual optimistic frame of mind, even about his brain contusion. "I was unconscious," he said, "and I was definitely for a few days in a much better spiritual place that made me aware of a lot of things that concern my life."

With the end of the war in Viet Nam, Founding Yippie Abbie Hoffman's career as a political activist seemed to be phasing out. But far from living in semiretirement in his Greenwich Village loft, the former defendant in the Chicago Eight conspiracy trial has apparently been developing a sideline. Along with three friends, Abbie, 36, was picked up in a narcotics raid on a midtown Manhattan hotel for allegedly selling three pounds of cocaine to two undercover policemen for $36,000. "They were the most nice people you ever met in your life," said one of the narcs, who wears a beard and long hair. "They loved us, as a matter of fact. They said we gave off good vibes." Out on $200,000 bail, Abbie could get from 15 years to life under New York's new stricter drug laws.

It was the classic confrontation between two women wearing the same outfit--almost. The pint-size mirror image of Bianco Jagger was none other than Tatum O'Neal--wearing a long summer dress with pearls, a wide-brimmed hat and carrying Bianca's trademark, the walking stick. Bianca was about to leave for Italy, and Tatum, 9, was in London with her father Ryan to promote their movie hit Paper Moon. Bianca and Tatum, who have become rival models but the best of friends, turned up in their look-alike getups at the wedding reception for trendy Restaurateur Michael Chow (Mister Chow's and Chow Two) and his new wife Tina.

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