In her upcoming show in Las Vegas, Ann-Margret will ride onstage on a Harley, wearing a jumpsuit, accompanied by a chorus squad of motorcyclists. At the end of the scene she will unzip the sirensuit, revealing herself in a flesh-colored body stocking, before climbing into a high-necked, bead-studded sheath. Offstage, the pneumatic star claims to prefer cover-up clothes. Still, when she showed up in Manhattan last week at Warlock Rex Reed's party for Film Maker Eleanor Perry, Ann-Margret must have known she would be on-camera, so she wore a costume she is comfortable in: a turban, pants, sable coat and the top of one of her bikinis.

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Actor Rod Steiger, 48, has made a name for himself in strongman roles as Napoleon in Waterloo, Al Capone in Al Capone and the redneck police chief in In the Heat of the Night. For his latest megalomaniac, Steiger has shaved his head and lost 45 Ibs. in order to work with Italian Director Carlo Lizzani on a movie (being shot in English) tentatively called Mussolini... the Last Act. Newsreel flashbacks of the real Duce strutting and posturing at the height of his power will be interspersed with scenes of Steiger playing Mussolini during the last four days of his life. As Steiger says, "He was desperate. He was cornered. He was paying the price of treachery and the ambiguity of those around him. It's what happens to every dictator."

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The entire room was stilled as for, say, the presentation of the Nobel Prize. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger with NBC's Barbara Walters entered Washington's Sans Souci restaurant and, it turned out, walked right into Fellow Diner Art Buchwald's web. Motioning Kissinger over to his table, Humorist Buchwald handed Henry two reels of tape, saying, "Henry, here are the tapes." Amid the general laughter, Kissinger proved he was the stuff of which Metternichs are made. He grinned, said thank you, grew red, and changed the subject. But he did not accept the present.

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"I respect and admire people of vaudeville. Ray Bolger, for example. An astonishing dancer. And Fanny Brice. She did a marvelous skit on me." So said Matriarch of Modern Dance Martha Graham, 79, who is best known for her spare interpretations of Greek tragedies. But then splinterbug Graham played two shows a day on the Phantasia circuit in the early twenties. Now on a lecture/concert tour, Graham also had some tart things to say about the Metropolitan Opera's former general manager Sir Rudolf Bing. "He had a misconceived notion of the purpose of dance," said Graham, who maintains that every woman has a touch of Medea and Clytemnestra in her. "He thought of it as fluffy, a superficial sort of thing to permit men to ogle pretty girls."

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The show must go on. But even unstoppable Martha Mitchell was silenced when Husband John, then the chauffeur, and finally the housekeeper left her without giving notice. Last week Martha Mitchell recovered her voice and was back burning the telephone wires. In a call to U.P.I.'s Helen Thomas, Martha had bad news for Nixon: "He's going to be kicked out." She was also still boiling mad at John, now reputed to be hiding out under an assumed name while he awaits trial in New York. Said Martha: "I suppose he's spending every day sitting in front of the television set and drinking--the way he did before he left." Meanwhile, Martha was particularly comforted by a letter from another former official's wife "because she understands what we have both been through." The empathetic correspondent? Judy Agnew.

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In a voice far from humane and language unbecoming a philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre lashed out at the right-wing Paris weekly Minute. Writing last year in his now defunct left-wing newspaper The People's Cause, Sartre described Minute reporters as "professional murder mongers and podgy assassins," adding ominously that he had their addresses and knew how to make use of them should it become necessary. Next thing he knew, the Minutemen had taken him to court for threatening their lives. Last week a Paris judge agreed with the Minute, rejecting Sartre's counterclaim that he was threatened by metaphor when the Minute called him "the red cancer of the nation" before noting "cancer should be operated on." Deciding that there had been enough acrimony, he fined Sartre just $93, plus 23-c- in damages to each of the plaintiffs.

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The gallant music director Stan Freeman climbed onto a piano stool to kiss the star's hand as she bowed to a standing ovation at suburban Washington's Shady Grove Music Fair. Suddenly, he toppled off the stool, dragging Marlene Dietrich, 68, down into the pit with him. Landing in the string section, Doughty Dietrich sustained a gouged gam, but struggled to her feet and waved bravely to her fans. Back in her hotel, she went straight to the top for medical treatment: chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Health Ted Kennedy. At 12 midnight Kennedy's staff was unable to fulfill Marlene's request for room-service surgery. Instead, she was urged to go to the George Washington University Hospital's emergency room, which, the next morning, is just what a disillusioned Dietrich did.

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