"It's the way I always take a picture with my fish," insisted Actor Paul Newman, 50, after hanging upside down from a hook in Islamorada, Fla. Newman, on a weekend vacation with Daughter Nell, 15, had landed a 273-lb. hammerhead shark from the Gulf Stream waters off Florida's southern coast. Back on the dock, he decided to try a variation of the traditional angler's photograph with his trophy. Then, his hang-ups resolved, Newman announced that he planned to mount the shark's head "and send it to my dentist." -

"My accent is at least as good as Henry Kissinger's," boasts Champagne Music Maker Lawrence Welk, and his sense of harmony may even be better. Still, the king of schmalz announced last week that he would not run for President in 1976. Welk disqualified himself after 5,000 followers, led by an ardent Santa Barbara, Calif, fan, had written to suggest his candidacy. "Politics, like music and golf, is best learned at an early age," said Welk. "Having reached the age of 72, I'm afraid it is a little late to change horses in the middle of a stream beset with such treacherous currents." No thank you, boys. -

"I come from a background where work is an honorable thing, and it finally got to me," explained combustive Singer Bette Midler after her 15-month absence from the stage. Midler abruptly stopped short her career in December 1973 and set out for a visit with her family in Honolulu, a tour of Paris art museums, and a respite in the Caribbean. "I learned a lot," says Bette of her sabbatical, "about dancing, speaking, singing and juggling." All of which Midler has incorporated into her new revue, Clams on the Half Shell, which opened last week in Philadelphia. During her break, the prodigal star added, she also found time to do some reading, including Erica Jong's raunchy bestseller, Fear of Flying. "I'm not afraid of flying," observes Midler coolly, "and I wouldn't mind a Chinese husband." -

"Clark Kent and Lois Lane will be in bed together unless the director decrees otherwise," promises Godfather Author Mario Puzo, who last week began his newest project, a movie script of Superman. Puzo, whose scripts for Godfather I and Earthquake are expected to gross $225 million for their Hollywood studios, says Superman will bring him a heroic paycheck well into six figures. And how will the leotarded champion of truth, justice and the American way find his own way into the boudoir? "It is a crucial question, but I have figured it out," says Puzo mysteriously. "I can't get campy; if I could, the possibilities are limitless."

As managing editor of Vanity Fair and later an Esquire contributor, Helen Lawrenson never suffered a shortage of bluntness. Now 67, and living in London, the author of Latins Are Lousy Lovers has gathered her most candid reminiscences in a memoir called Stranger at the Party (Random House; $8.95). The book, to be published this month, details many erotic encounters, including a taxicab entanglement with Publisher Conde Nast ("I've never known a man who savored sex more raptly") and a table-top coupling with the late, revered Rabbi Stephen Wise. Lawrenson offers the last word on almost everyone. She dismisses Aviator Charles Lindbergh as "boyish, bland and boring," Novelist John O'Hara as a "second-rate imitation of Scott Fitzgerald." Not even her longtime lover, the venerable financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch, who was 37 years her senior, escapes unscathed. Observes Lawrenson: "Sexually, he was surprisingly naive." -

The party in a Paris nightclub called L'Aventure celebrated "Women and Flowers," but Princess Caroline of Monaco seemed to be reveling in her own royal nubility. Wearing the same satin crepe dress in which she posed, somewhat more demurely, for her 18th-birthday portrait two months ago, the Princess revealed a bit more of Caroline than caution. "My favorite designer is Karl Lagerfeld," she said of the creator of her deep decolletage, adding emphatically, "and I do my own shopping." For Caroline, now a student in Paris, adventure was short-lived. Her parents, Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, arrived shortly afterward to bundle their daughter up and off for a ten-day Easter vacation.

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