The Ladies' Home Journal is not so dumb. It commissioned Renaissance Woman Candice Bergen, 28, to get inside the White House and shoot some informal pictures of the First Family. Candy had already caught the eye of official White House Photographer David Hume Kennerly, who obligingly set up exclusive photo sessions for her. Candy seemed exclusive too. So it was that an envious Washington photo corps saw Candy and David not only stepping out together at the state dinner for visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar All Bhutto but even indulging in a little slap-and-tickle as well. "It's been incredibly exciting," said Candy. "I didn't know you could have such a good time at a state dinner." It looked like the old story: Let's go into the darkroom and see what develops.

"If that's the way it's got to be ..." an irritated Senator Russell Long was heard to say. There he was, swaggering along in the mask of captain emeritus of the Louisiana State Society's annual Mardi Gras Ball in Washington, when he found himself a lawbreaker. Some 15 years ago, he had made a rule that anyone who took off his mask would be fined $50. But when Long approached Honored Guest Betty Ford to claim a dance, a Secret Service man barred his way, saying, "You can't dance with Mrs. Ford until we know who you are." Russell identified himself, but Mrs. Ford's protector persisted, "You will have to take off your mask." So Long dropped his mask and $50 for a dance with Betty.

Who was this all-American paragon, oozing the sap of maple-sugared kindness? When ABC aired the Howard Hughes story, a made-for-TV film biography of the reclusive millionaire, the protagonist was unrecognizable. When, for instance, Lana Turner anticipated marrying him, she had all her sheets monogrammed HH; Hughes turned her down with "marry Huntington Hartford." A more sinister Hughes emerged from Film Maker Ron Lyon's experience. He had reckoned without his subject. When Lyon tried to obtain newsreel clips of Hughes, the only ones available were of him smiling and waving. Then the insurance company, doubtless aware of Hughes' litigious nature, insisted that most of the critical remarks be cut. But undaunted, Lyon is now working on a made-for-TV movie biography of another rich person who values privacy: Jacqueline Onassis.

To the 18-year-old Norwegian maid, her employers, the Nelson Rockefellers, were very odd. One night, when they were late, she left dinner on the stove and went off to a party in Brooklyn. Next day Nelson's first wife, Mary Clark Rockefeller, demonstrated the helplessness of the very rich. "AnneMarie, what happened to you last night? I had to take my husband to Hamburg Heaven." That was only the beginning, as Anne-Marie Rasmussen reveals in her autobiography There Was Once a Time. Contrary to the American Dream, Second Son Steven had no sooner married her in 1959 than they lived unhappily ever after. It was psychoanalysts for both and not a laugh in between. "The Rockefellers are not funloving," recalls Anne-Marie, who divorced Steven in 1970. "Their idea of a good time is a serious discussion." Now 36 and divorced from her second husband, Businessman Robert Krogstad, Anne-Marie lives with her three Rockefeller children in New York's Westchester County. She has become tough-minded about her ten-year sojourn among one of the country's richest families. Said she last week: "Steven wanted a simple country girl and found himself with someone more complex than himself."

"I can't bear to listen to myself," said Mabel Mercer on her 75th birthday. But every smart pop singer in the past 50 years has listened and learned from Mercer how to shape and pace a lyric. Her unique style of talking a song was developed to compensate for her failing soprano voice. Now, she says, "it's just a noise." Enough, however, to hold some 500 guests spellbound at her birthday party in Manhattan. Mabel's star pupil could not make the party, but he did not forget the singer who "taught me everything I know." Frank Sinatra sent a bouquet and a note: "I love you, Mabel. Have a marvelous day." -

Hey there, cutes!/ Put on your dancing boots/ and come dance with me. This is the call that frustrated Tap Dancer Barbara Walters had been waiting for. She got it finally last week when she filled in for Johnny Carson on the Tonight show. Guest Gene Kelly graciously appraised Barbara's potential. After a few turns round the set, Barbara asked Gene to check her waltz clog (a tap step) because "I can't click my heels together properly." In no time Gene was showing Barbara how to tap and it was clear that Barbara's latent ambitions were aflame. "It hasn't been the field I've made it in," she acknowledged. "But it's never too late."

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