All over the town of Higuera Real, the posters announced the appearance of Angelita, the first woman torero to fight in Spain since a 1908 law was passed limiting women to fighting from horseback. But Angela Hernandez, 24, got gored, metaphorically speaking, before she even entered a corrida. Although a Madrid labor court upheld Angelita's right to fight on foot, the Ministry of the Interior refused to grant her a license. Working her cape close to the horns of the dilemma as she trained on a bull ranch near Seville, Angelita exploded: "These damned men. What do they think they are doing? Women fly planes, fight wars and go on safaris; what's so different about fighting bulls?" sb An odd couple, Wilt ("the Stilt") Chamberlain, 7 ft. 1 in., and Champion Jockey Willie Shoemaker, 4 ft. 11 in. But they have more in common than meets the eye, Little Willie told fellow roasters barbecuing Wilt on the Dean Martin Show to be shown Nov. 9. Born identical twins, said Shoemaker, "we both grew up to be riders." Only difference: "I ride horses. He rides referees."

sb The most poisonous pen on Broadway is wielded by Critic John Simon. Reviewing the new play Nellie Toole & Co. in New York magazine, Simon dipped into strychnine to describe the star, Sylvia Miles, 41, as "one of New York's leading party girls and gate-crashers." Streperous Sylvia, who was acclaimed as the prostitute in Midnight Cowboy, wasted no time talking back. Invited to the same New York Film Festival party as Simon, she piled her plate with pat, steak tartare, brie and potato salad and dumped it over him. "Now you can call me a plate crasher too," she said. Spluttered the garnished critic: "I'll be sending you the cleaning bill for this suit." Rejoined Sylvia: "It'll be the first time it's been cleaned." Fellow actors planned to organize a Sylvia Miles defense fund to pay Simon's cleaning bill --but on one condition. That Miles repeats the performance once a week. sb Jean Cocteau said she had the head of a little black swan. "And," added Colette, "the heart of a little black bull." Caustic Couturiere Coco Chanel, however, always had the last insult ("Colette preferred two grilled sausages to love; Cocteau was well bred. He had no talent, so he listened"). While stocking the modern woman's wardrobe (the little black dress, bellbottoms, turtleneck sweaters and costume jewelry), Mademoiselle was also busy needling her friends, enemies, lovers and other contemporaries. Now Psychoanalyst Claude Baillen, a companion of her last years, has put together some of Coco's sharpest jabs in Chanel Solitaire, which was recently published in London.

On Salvador Dali: "He wore a carnation behind his ear to take away the smell. He used to eat tins of sardines and put the oil on his hair."

On Richard Burton: "He looked at Liz with his mouth. He's working-class, you know; he stares at you as if he were taking your clothes off."

On Jean Harlow: "Always waggling her ass, looking for millionaires."

Beyond individuals, whole nations were condemned by Chanel dicta: "I don't like Italians. They're women dressed up as men."

sb

"My nose!" cried Actor Richard Chamberlain, who gave up a promising TV medical career as Dr. Kildare when the series ended to risk rigor mortis on the classical stage (TIME, Nov. 16,1970). Chamberlain was not referring to an injury but rehearsing his role as the pro-boscoid Cyrano de Bergerac. The nose job is a work of art in itself: a piece of sponge rubber molded into an Olympic ski jump. Presumably, a supply of eight noses will last the six-week run of the play at Los Angeles' Ahmanson Theater. Chamberlain sacrificed his good looks gladly: "It's very freeing for an actor to cover his looks. You're much less self-conscious and able to be the character."

sb Harvard Square Theater was jammed for the first of the prestigious Charles Eliot Norton lectures. But lecture was not exactly the right word for it. Flamboyant Conductor-Composer Leonard Bernstein (Harvard, '39) offered instead a multimedia production of slides, film and sound on the subject "Whither Music?" There was also an unscheduled theatrical moment in the middle of a filmed performance of Bernstein conducting Mozart's G-Minor Symphony: a bomb threat emptied the auditorium. "I wouldn't have minded if the bombthreat caller had only interrupted me," said Bernstein after the audience had filed back. "But to have interrupted Mozart was a sacrilege." sb The mostly under-25 audience screamed, shrieked, applauded hysterically, and at concert's end, showered the stage with rose petals. As for the new pop idol, she obviously enjoyed being fallen in love with again. Circe-of-the-'30s Marlene Dietrich, 68, was electrifying the teeny-bopper circuit in Paris-with her husky-musky presence. Acknowledging her success with a third generation, Dietrich was wary of predicting a trend, saying only, "In France, I have the youngest, most enthusiastic audience in Europe."

sb "I could have run four more miles," puffed Dixiecrat Rebpublican Strom Thurmond, 70, as he finished well back in the pack celebrating National Jogging Day with a two-mile race around the Ellipse in Washington. Old Strom's belief in physical fitness is a Senate byword predating even his 1970 marriage to his second wife Nancy, 26. Rising at 5:30 a.m., the South Carolina Senator jogs about three miles, then does fifteen minutes of calisthenics and follows up during the day with a turn or two with the barbells. Sometimes his colleagues are directly affected by his vigor: Thurmond holds the Senate filibuster record of 24 hours and 18 minutes, and in 1964 he angrily wrestled Texas Democrat Ralph Yarborough to the floor of a Senate corridor. sb When Jonathan Livingston Seagull's creator Richard Bach sold the supergull to Hollywood, he believed he had ensured the movie's integrity. He thought his contract entitled him to write the script and to retain control over the finished film. Enter Producer-Director Hall Bartlett, who was so proud of his acquisition that he declared: "I was born to make this movie." Perhaps worried that someone might miss the message, Bartlett allegedly rewrote the dialogue: the result is Billygrahamese. Asking for a preliminary injunction to prevent the new version of the movie from ever opening, Bach hopes to have a chance to revise the scriptures. Meanwhile he must be cursing himself for being so, well, gullible. sb Marriage and fatherhood have, it seems, brought fresh frustrations to Angry Young Man Tom Hoyden, 33. While Wife Jane Fonda, 35, emcees the singing, speeches and slides of a touring troupe campaigning against U.S. aid to South Viet Nam, Husband Tom does his own tour of duty taking care of their son, Troy, three months. When the group arrived at Wellesley College for a show, Tom and Troy established themselves behind the front lines: in a church basement. Surprised by a photographer as the family was leaving the campus, Hayden exploded, "You want trouble?" He momentarily raised above his head a threatening object, which turned out to be Troy's bassinet.

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