Eat your heart out, Bruce Springsteen. Take a back seat, Elton John. The "Artist of the Year," according to a poll of 6,000 Rolling Stone readers, is Peter Frampton, 26. No wonder. His latest album, Frampton Comes Alive!, has sold 10 million copies, and 2 million fans this year have seen and heard the gyrating rock singer in concert Frampton's modest explanation of his success: "I do what Jolson, Sinatra, Tony Bennett and the Beatles did--what all the greats do. I communicate." Frampton has signed to make a movie in which he will play a rock star who sings the Beatles' songs. The film's title: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

They were all known as Tokyo Rose--the dozen or so women who broadcast from Japan to World War II G.I.s in the Pacific. The most notorious was Iva Toguri d'Aquino, an American citizen visiting Tokyo who was interned by the Japanese during the war and forced, she claimed, to go on the air. Several defense witnesses attested that this was true, but because D'Aquino had asked the G.I.s how they would get home "now that your ships are sunk," she was convicted of treason in 1949 after her return to the U.S. She served more than six years in prison, then moved to Chicago where she has been managing an Oriental import shop. Three times she has asked for a presidential pardon--"a measure of vindication." On his last full day as President, Gerald Ford agreed and granted D'Aquino, now 60, a "full and unconditional" pardon on the grounds that it was "the right thing to do and the proper time to do it."

Over the hill at eleven. When TV's Dennis the Menace went off the air in 1963, Terrible Tyke Jay North found the going a bit like his dog--Ruff. After some guest spots, a handful of movies and a short-lived TV series (Maya), his career simply dried up. Ready for something new, North, now 25, signed up for a four-year hitch in the Navy. The Naval Reserve captain assigned to swear him in turned out to be another former child star: Jackie Cooper, 54. Said Cooper: "I think North is making a good choice. Most of us former film moppets are drunk, dead or hidden away."

Ernie Banks has not been heard from much since he retired as an active player with the Chicago Cubs in 1971. The shortstop-first baseman, who hit 512 home runs in his 19 seasons with the team, has worked as a coach at Wrigley Field and as a roving instructor for the Cubs' farm system. But he never lost the sunny disposition that made him one of the best-loved players in baseball. "It's a beautiful day for a ball game," he would often say. "Let's play two." If a doubleheader was scheduled, he would propose to make it three in a row. Last week Banks, 45, enjoyed his most beautiful day yet. He was elected to baseball's Hall of Fame, only the eighth player to be named in his first year of eligibility (five years after retirement). Even Joe DiMaggio did not make it until his third year on the ballot, and Yogi Berra until his second. Grinned "Mr. Cub": "It's the greatest moment of my life."

"Being an astronaut takes concentration and patience, and it can be tedious--just like football,"says O.J. Simpson, 29, who ought to know. The star running back of the Buffalo Bills has hung up his cleats for a while to play the space mate of Sam Waterston and James Brolin in Capricorn One, a movie about a manned flight to Mars. "I could never be a real astronaut and sit in that tiny capsule for days," declares the Juice. "I have too much energy." He likes acting though, and plans to try it full time when he retires from the gridiron. The role he most aspires to: Coalhouse Walker, the piano player in Ragtime.

It was the octogenarian Sunday painter's first one-man show, and it opened, appropriately, at the center for labor studies in suburban Washington, D.C., named after George Meany (see BUSINESS & ECONOMY). The gruff AFL-CIO boss began dabbling with a paint-by-numbers set 21 years ago, and was soon devoting an hour a day to landscapes and still lifes of his own. He got the idea for Bermuda Race from a newspaper photo; Merry Christmas was inspired by a clown on a greeting card. One red, yellow and blue abstract dubbed Unfilled originated as a doodle. Meany confessed that it was created "during a deadly dull meeting of the President's Commission on Productivity."

"I get to go out onstage eight times a week with Rex Harrison, a true champion in his 60s who still gets the girl," gloats Elizabeth Ashley. At 37, she is playing a 16-year-old Cleopatra to Harrison's 50-year-old Caesar in the G.B. Shaw play at Washington's Kennedy Center. Ashley is delighted with her jewel-studded Egyptian robes, "the most breathtaking drag I've ever had on." For her sequined eye makeup she got some tips from another Cleopatra: Elizabeth

Taylor, who starred with Rex Harrison and Richard Burton in the 1963 screen version that cost $41 million but brought in considerably less at the box office. While the two Cleos were seated together at an Inaugural dinner party last week, Taylor took a fork and outlined the Egyptian's eyes on the tablecloth. "I've since tried her tricks," says Ashley. "And they work."

Other performers got some helpful hints from Elizabeth Taylor later in the week. In a special lecture at the University of Virginia, the actress told her audience of drama students that she may do some directing. "It fascinates me at this moment in my life even more than acting. The more you enjoy yourself onstage, the less the audience does," she advised. "The more you cry onstage, the less the audience cries. If you become too self-indulgent, you become too cliquish." Was there a role she had always wanted to do, but never had the chance? asked a student. "Yes," said the newly wed Liz. "Mrs. John Warner." -

The waifish face beneath the jaunty white cap never loses its ethereal Pre-Raphaelite look. Little wonder that Actress Carol Kane's career seems caught in a time warp. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as Gitl in Hester Street, set in the 1890s. Now, in Ken Russell's upcoming screen biography of Rudolph Valentino (played by Rudolf Nureyev), she is the Sheik's sweetheart in the Hollywood of the 1920s. In her next film, The World's Greatest Lover, she will get involved in a talent hunt for a second Valentino. Kane, 24, has become hooked on the lady-killer of the silent screen. Says she: "I'm going to do nothing but films about Valentino for the rest of my life."

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