With next week's tennis face-off between U.S. Open Champ Jimmy Connors and Australian John Newcombe

turning into the money match of the year ($250,000 to the winner), the pre-game volleys have already begun. Piqued by hecklers at an earlier tournament, Connors at first offered to buy 536 courtside box seats for his confrontation with Newcombe at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. No, thanks, said hotel officials. Then last week Connors' manager Bill Riordan gave a quick backhand to Golfer Jack Nicklaus, who, Riordan claimed, had labeled such big-money, head-to-head sports contests as "ripoffs of the public." Huffed Riordan: "Nicklaus wouldn't be making the big money he does if it weren't for Arnold Palmer, who turned the public on to golf. Jimmy Connors has turned the public on to tennis." One-one; service goes back to Nicklaus.

With his socialist books no longer banned in Portugal, French Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, 69, felt encouraged enough to take a firsthand reading of the Portuguese revolution. During a 15-day visit to the country with his longtime friend, Author Simone de Beauvoir, 67, Sartre chatted with writers and students, toured a factory and dined in Lisbon's Red Barracks Canteen with the Light Artillery Regiment, most radical of Portugal's revolutionary forces. Despite his antimilitarism, Sartre seemed thoroughly reconciled to the Portuguese army, which, he said, "is not like any other" since it represents all classes of society. The diminutive existentialist was less cheered by some of the Portuguese civilians, however, and not surprisingly, he found a political explanation: "They still walk along the streets of Lisbon as if they were alone, without relation to other people--a hangover from fascism."

"They're surprised that I'm wacky and that I can sing," smiles Actress Eileen Fulton, whose nightclub act at New York's Plaza Hotel includes gospel music as well as Duke Ellington songs. Until now, Fulton has been better known to audiences as Lisa Shea, that cunning mistress of malevolence on the daytime soap opera As the World Turns. In 15 years of televised traumas, Fulton has neatly tucked away three marriages, two divorces, 18 or 19 lovers, two children (one in wedlock, one out), a phantom fetus and a miscarriage. In real life, she is the daughter of a Methodist minister and is married to Record Producer Dan Fortunato. She commutes into Manhattan from staid suburban Westchester County. "I'd love to play a real evangelist like Aimee Semple McPherson," says Fulton of her Hollywood aspirations. In case that script doesn't work out, however, Fulton has continued fulfilling her soap-opera duties each day before heading for the Plaza.

Throughout their six-year marriage, there were rumors that Aristotle and Jacqueline Onassis would part, but after his death last month, speculation turned quickly to the size of her new fortune. Estimates went up to $200 million, with $15 million inheritances for John and

Caroline Kennedy. Now it seems that the Onassises were involved in a conflict that suggests ancient Greek family struggles. When his only son Alexander, 24, died after an air crash in 1973, Onassis' health began to decline rapidly; An and Jackie grew apart, and some of his cronies are convinced that he was prepared to divorce her. His daughter Christina, 24, curtailed her social life to be with her father and involve herself in his complex finances. Jackie apparently may end up with the bare minimum inheritance allowed under Greek law, which governs only part of Onassis' scattered estate; the figure could be as low as $3 million. The Kennedy children will receive the income from a trust until they are 21. There were jet set whispers that the person who urged Onassis to these penurious measures was Christina. Expectations are that Jackie will fight in the courts for more.

"I said it couldn't be done. I thought you couldn't beat the American press," chided retired Rear Admiral Jackson R. Tate, 77, who had just emerged from 18 days of seclusion with his daughter, Soviet Actress Victoria Fyodorova, 29. The child of a wartime love affair between Tate, then a U.S. naval captain in Moscow, and Actress Zoya Fyodorova, Victoria met her father for the first time on March 23. Her visit to the U.S., and the pair's successful retreat to a Florida hideaway, had been arranged and paid for by the gossipy National Enquirer. Last week at a 45-minute press conference in the paper's Florida offices, the old admiral held hands with Victoria and told reporters that he had just sought permission from Soviet officials in Washington to adopt his daughter. Moments later, he was asked if he had known much about the Enquirer before the tabloid put him into the spotlight. Confessed Tate: "No, I never read it."

"It's a nice place just to visit," concluded Actor Jack Nicholson after two months on location at the state mental hospital in Salem, Ore. Nicholson has just completed filming One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a movie based on Ken Kesey's 1962 novel and co-produced by The Streets of San Francisco Star Michael Douglas. The film stars Nicholson as an asylum inmate ("crazy as a fox") and features former Oregon Governor Tom McCall, Jazz Singer Seatman Crothers and some of the hospital's 600 inmates in its cast. Nicholson, who anticipated that his assignment would be "a fairly depressing and intense experience," found that both actors and inmates gained from their contact. "What saved the day for me was to see how much good it did for the patients to work in the film," he observed last week. "One of our extras improved so much, he was discharged when the shooting ended."

"Running a major studio is more difficult than running a small country," Paramount Production Boss Robert Evans once observed. Now, after three failed marriages (including one to Actress Ali MacGraw) and a string of box office successes (Godfather I and II, Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby, Love Story), Evans is abdicating his Paramount throne. This week Evans, 44, begins anew as an independent producer under contract to Paramount, responsible for up to 24 new films over the next six years. Among his projects: a sequel to Chinatown and a remake of the 1946 classic, Notorious. Evans' decision to quit as production chief may be due in part to a falling out with Charles Bluhdorn, autocratic chairman of Paramount's parent company, Gulf & Western. Paramount cut Evans' slice of Chinatown's profits from 25% to 12 1/2%, and the two men have not spoken for months. "Charlie has been like a father to me," says Evans. "But you don't necessarily have to love your father."

When New York City announced plans to display the long-secret court records of Aaron Burr's 1836 divorce case, in which the 80-year-old ex-Vice President was accused of adultery, at least one part-time historian was unexcited. "It's all in my book," points out Gore Vidal, who pieced the story together accurately for his historical novel Burr, without aid of court records. "I have never seen them. I've just gone on other people's word." Of Burr's long-lived virility, Vidal added: "Burr was a small, trim little man, and small, trim little men last longer sexually. In fact, they last longer in general than more corpulent capon types, like George Washington, who seem to have no sexual vitality and a relatively short life."

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