The figure cutting across the ice at Madison Square Garden had hardly changed since the Winter Olympics in 1968. After gliding off from Grenoble with a gold medal for figure skating, Peggy Fleming had spent eight years on the ice-show circuit, married a dermatologist and, by last week, decided to put her career into the deep freeze temporarily. The reason: her first child, due in January. "We wanted to have a baby for a long time, but it just didn't happen," said Fleming, 28. "I decided to go back to work and start thinking about other things. Sure enough, it worked." Though she'll quit the Holiday On Ice troupe in three weeks, Peggy hinted at a short retirement. "I think I'll always be connected with skating," she said. "It's a change from housework."

Life in the back seat can be a rough ride for some politicians' wives, according to Mary Lindsay, who is married to New York City's former mayor John Lindsay. "I don't get that big of a jag out of shlumping along the street with all those people shoving and pushing behind some character who thinks he's a hero," she complained to the Westsider, a Manhattan weekly. Political groupies were also a bad trip, said Mary, who "had to compete with women for years as a wife of a very attractive man and a man in public life." John, now a practicing lawyer and part-time commentator on ABC's Good Morning America, had nevertheless steered clear of would-be lovers, she insisted. "He knows that I would be very tough on anyone like that." How tough? "I'd just smack the hell out of her, pull her hair out, kick her in the ass and throw her out the door. It would be very simple."

Instead of running for reelection, Utah Democrat Allan Howe may soon start running for cover. Last June, in the midst of his campaign for a second term in the House of Representatives, Howe, 48, was arrested in Salt Lake City and charged with propositioning two shapely police decoys. The result: conviction in city court and the resignation of his campaign manager. Proclaiming his innocence, the Congressman took his case to a state court where he was convicted once again and handed a 30-day suspended sentence. There's more. Shortly after Howe's second trial last week, his new campaign manager was arrested. The charge? Selling marijuana to an undercover cop.

There's a boom in war movies--or so it seems from the army of actors now before the camera. After providing cinematic sea battles in Midway earlier this summer, film makers are currently at work on A Bridge Too Far, Producer Joseph E. Levine's version of the battle of Arnhem in World War II, and Apocalypse Now, Director Francis Ford Coppola's vision of Viet Nam. Last week MacArthur, Hollywood's newest bombs-and-bullets epic, began production, with Gregory Peck starring as the general who made a famous return to the Philippines in 1944--and an equally notorious departure from Korea seven years later. "For better or for worse, if I'm remembered at all, I'll be remembered for this role," intones Peck, "simply because it's Douglas MacArthur." Old soldiers never die; they just keep fading into movie scripts.

"I tried it once in 1959, and I didn't like it," noted Football Veteran George Blanda earlier this year, considering the possibilities of retirement. A gray-haired survivor from the game's Paleolithic period, Blanda scored a record 2,002 points in 26 seasons as a quarterback and kicker. Last week at 48, the oldest player in football history and the idol of aging jocks everywhere faced retirement again when the Oakland Raiders placed him on waivers. His replacement on the squad: Kicker Fred Steinfort, 24, who was not yet born when Blanda first signed with the Chicago Bears back in 1949. "I'm not crying because I know this is the end. I'm too old. If a team took me, they'd be nuts," said Blanda. "But if they did, I'd go."

Though no one has yet been found to fill the old Man of Steel's flight boots, the movie version of Superman may soon be getting off the ground. Among the heavyweights hired for the $25 million production are Marlon Brando (The Godfather), who will play Superman's father, and Gene Hackman (The French Connection), who will portray one of our hero's archenemies. "I didn't live in a particularly affluent neighborhood as a kid, so nobody could collect Superman comic books," recalls Hackman. "I would buy a few and trade judiciously." After his movie role, the actor just may stock up on a few back issues. The super salaries offered to Brando and Hackman? Two million dollars each.

England's working class may lack for dough, but its upper crust is holding together quite nicely, thank you. Among the engagements announced last week in London: that of Lady Jane Grosvenor, 22, and the tenth Duke of Roxburghe, 21. Her ladyship's family has holdings estimated at $530 million, including 300 acres in London and a 22,500-acre homestead in Cheshire. The duke, meanwhile, inherited $4.4 million of his own two years ago, and will take control, when he turns 30, of Floors, the family's 100-room castle and 60,000 acres in Scotland. Such matrimonial mergers among the nobility have left some folks feeling a bit put out. Sniffed Gossipmonger Nigel Dempster of London's Daily Mail: "I think it's terribly unfair to the fortune hunters of Europe."

In 15 years of shuttling between the Los Angeles and Israel Philharmonic orchestras, Zubin Mehta has spent almost as much time commuting as conducting. Last week at the Hollywood Bowl, the maestro's roving ended-- temporarily at least-- when he brought both orchestras together in a single performance. On hand for the event: Soprano Beverly Sills, who sang four arias. "Remember Deanna Durbin in One Hundred Men and a Girl? Well, I beat her," announced Sills during rehearsals. "I've got 200." Mehta called the evening "a dream come true" but carefully declined to name his favorite orchestra. "What would a devout Moslem answer as to which one of his two wives he preferred?" he asked. "One can have preferences about details--a dimple here, an oboe there."

"The part did not require a character change," says Actress Jean Peters, 49, describing her first movie assignment since A Man Called Peter (1955). "It was a sympathetic character, a little sharp-tongued, and that was easy to bring off." Jean's new role in The Moneychangers, a 6 1/2-hour TV-movie serial, might have been easy for other reasons as well. Now cast as the wife of an overly ambitious businessman, Peters played real-life wife for 14 years to Industrialist Howard Hughes, no second banana when it came to ambition. "It's a cameo role," concedes the actress, who still collects $50,000 each year as part of her 1971 divorce settlement from Hughes. "I'm older now and not as adventurous. A small part satisfies me."

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