That contented-looking fellow is Actor Burt Reynolds, starring as a backwoods Southern moonshiner in a new film titled Gator. The half-clad lady bending backward to please him is Actress-Model Lauren Hutton, playing an investigative reporter who falls into Burt's clutches. The movie, which is due for release next year, gives Reynolds his first chance to direct, and Co-Star Hutton, at least, says he did all right. "He was able to accept ideas from the actors; he even accepted some of mine," she reports. And what about that love scene, Lauren? "I kept asking for retakes. It was the only scene we shot more than once."

The ad appears each day in the personals of the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner. It reads: "Mac " McKuen. If you may know of the above (spelling may vary) who worked in the Bay Area in 1933 (then aged 27) as a salesman ... pls. call Neilson & Green, S.F. 665-4386. Neilson & Green, it turns out, is a detective agency working for Pop Poet Rod McKuen, who hired the sleuths last month to track down his long-lost father. The poet, whose mother died in 1971, was born an illegitimate child in a Salvation Army hospital in 1933. Father disappeared shortly before his son debuted in 1933. "Having been born a bastard," says Rod, "I feel it has given me a head start on all those people who have spent their lives becoming one."

"I put on what I like, and I like naked women," insisted Impresario Alain Bernardin, who was host at a 25th anniversary celebration for his Paris nightspot, the Crazy Horse Saloon. On hand was Choreographer George Balanchine, who came to France to watch his Ravel ballets at the Paris Opera. Said the appreciative Balanchine after surveying the legwork of Bernardin's 18 dancing show girls: "You ought to lend some of your ideas to the opera."

Oil-rich King Khalid of Saudi Arabia could doubtless afford a solid-gold Cadillac. Modestly, he ordered instead the longest Cadillac ever built. The Khalidillac, designed by Detroit's articulate extravert Dollie Cole in collaboration with Husband Ed, the former president of General Motors, is a somber navy-blue behemoth that is 25 ft. 2 in. long. The extra length was achieved by splicing in an additional 4 ft. amidships. The Caddy, with no bulletproofing, weighs 7,800 lbs. (v. the standard 5,889), requires supersuspension and stronger tires. Its air conditioning demands added insulation to overcome desert heat. Price: $30,000. "Khalid," says Dollie, "didn't want anything flashy or Hollywoody--just a functional, mobile office for a working King."

The Pope, before whom presidents and kings have knelt and offered obeisance, suddenly fell to his own knees last week and kissed the feet of a Greek Orthodox religious leader, Metropolitan Meliton of Chalcedon. During ceremonies at the Sistine Chapel in Rome, the gray-bearded Metropolitan had announced that representatives of 250 million Orthodox Christians were preparing for theological dialogue with leaders of the world's 650 million Roman Catholics, which could lay the ground for reunification. The great schism between the two bodies dates back to 1054, when the churches of Pope Leo IX and Greek Orthodox Patriarch Michael Cerularius of Constantinople angrily excommunicated each other's leader. Said the stunned Metropolitan after the incident with Paul: "Only a saint has the courage to do what the Pope did."

The invitations came in the form of a subpoena, and the party itself took place in an abandoned Los Angeles jail. Guests included Performers Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland and Jacqueline Bisset, who were frisked, photographed and fingerprinted at the door. The mock lockup was all in honor of Author Truman Capote, who is currently in Hollywood portraying a criminologist who becomes a victim in Murder By Death, his first movie as an actor instead of a screenwriter. Capote allowed as how a night in the slammer was welcome respite from his daytime job. "Making movies is hard work," burbled Truman. "They had me lying on the floor with a knife in my back for two days."

According to one guest, it was a marriage ceremony featuring Washington power and Boston brains. Richard Goodwin, 44, a former speechwriter for the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, and Doris Kearns, 32, a Harvard government professor who once served as Lyndon Johnson's White House confidante, stopped talking politics long enough to exchange wedding vows last week in Massachusetts. The pair had been collaborating on a history of the Johnson years until a tangled legal dispute between Basic Books, Simon & Schuster and the authors caused Goodwin to drop out of the project last June. They were wished better luck in their new joint venture by 175 guests including Senator Ted Kennedy, Writer Norman Mailer and Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. "It's a pity my wife isn't here," observed Schlesinger after the crowded ceremony in the Goodwins' home. "She is two feet taller than I am and could have seen it all."

Actor-Director Orson Welles will do a mind-reading act, and Comedian Bill Cosby will play a fumble-thumbs straight man. But the star of NBC's Dec. 26 special will be Doug Henning, 28, Canadian-born escape artist, magician and current Broadway star of The Magic Show. For his debut as host of a live TV special (The World of Magic), Henning will attempt Houdini's famous water-torture escape trick, a piece of submerged wizardry last performed by the master himself in the 1920s. With hands manacled and feet padlocked in stocks, Henning will descend headfirst into a tank of water. To break Houdini's record, he must escape within two minutes. If he wants to continue his TV career, he'll have just a bit more time. Says Doug: "I can only hold my breath for 2 1/2 minutes."

There she was, sounding like a sightseeing bus driver. Actress-Singer Ann-Margret, 34, had come to Paris for a part in Director Claude Chabrol's new movie Crazy Bourgeoisie, a pillow comedy co-starring Bruce Dern and Stephane Audran. Between scenes for her cameo role as a philandering translator, the actress did some Paris sightseeing. "Wherever you go there are always these fabulous restaurants or monuments or boutiques," she commented, displaying her celebrated eye for detail. Ann-Margret added that she had picked up at least one extravagant souvenir during her travels--a mink coat for Husband-Manager Roger Smith on his 43rd birthday. Customs officials, please note.

"Maureen. Thank God, she can cope with anything, just by being a bundle of nerves," drawled Playwright Tennessee Williams, 61, after watching Maureen Stapleton star in the umpteenth production of his masterwork, The Glass Menagerie. Though Williams criticized

Broadway's Circle in the Square Theater as a "gymnasium," New York Times Critic Clive Barnes called the revival of the 1944 work "magnificent." After offering praise to Stapleton and Cast Members Rip Torn, Pamela Payton-Wright and Paul Rudd, Tennessee expressed some surprise at Menagerie's longevity. "They teach it in college now, and everybody approaches it as though it were a place of worship," he observed. "Frankly, I fall asleep at times."

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