The silence was deafening in Washington's Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts--as it always is during a performance by French Mime Marcel Marceau. A studious Amy Carter, sitting on her father's knee, diligently read over the program notes, somewhat unnecessary labor considering the French mimic's talent for making himself wordlessly understood. After the performance, the presidential party paid a visit backstage. Jimmy Carter pronounced the mime's work "absolutely unbelievable," and said he was most impressed with a sketch entitled "Never War Again." Said Marceau: "This is the greatest honor that could be paid to a Frenchman."

Some might consider Rock Star Alice Cooper to be oral rot personified. Little do they know. Having dabbled with pythons and hanging by the neck, the hairy exponent of amplified Grand Guignol is rooting for pearly whiteness v. yucky blackness on his latest road tour, beginning this week. To that end, Cooper (a.k.a. Vincent Damon Furnier) has added four dancing molars to his act, along with a toothbrush suitable for a masticating mastodon. Says he: "You can never be too big for oral hygiene." Fangs a lot.

Her birthday happens to be June 16, the eve of the anniversary of the Watergate breakin, a significant date in the annals of Publisher Katharine Graham's newspaper, the Washington Post. So many friends wanted to throw a 60th birthday party for her that to avoid confusion or hurt feelings, she threw one herself at her home in Georgetown. Cracked Toastmaster Art Buchwald to some 100 old chums of the hostess: "To people who do not know her personally, Kay Graham is considered the most powerful woman in America, but for those of us who are close to her she is the most powerful woman in the world."

Newly appointed U.S. Ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield has just arrived in Tokyo, but already he may have opened up a new market for publishers of American slang dictionaries. Montana-born Mansfield started off his first official press conference with the declaration: "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm the new boy on the block. Shoot!" Blankness crept across the face of Mansfield's interpreter; then he recovered. In translation, "new boy" became kozokko, meaning junior apprentice. "Shoot" was simply ignored. That seemed to work, but afterward, some of the more curious Japanese reporters were still politely buttonholing U.S. embassy officials to find out what on earth the honorable gentleman had said.

"Do you know what it's like to be mobbed by 500 people coming at you from different directions?" moans Rubye Beattie, who does. "I understand why they have Secret Service agents." Rubye's knowledge of hungry throngs derives from one striking fact: she is a dead ringer for First Lady Rosalynn Carter. The fortyish Beverly Hills housewife did not really take note of the resemblance until Rosalynn appeared on the cover of PEOPLE magazine last November and friends around the country deluged Rubye with wittily inscribed copies. Now she hopes to get on a TV show or two and has got herself an agent (who also manages a Jimmy Carter look-alike). There is, however, one little difference between Rubye and Rosalynn, Rubye is a Republican.

"My dropping out of college was a family agreement," says Gerald Ford's daughter, Susan, who left the University of Kansas last month to become a photographer. "My parents are proud that at my age I already have a career when most kids don't." Only 19, she has wasted little time in landing a toothsome assignment. Susan arrives at Martha's Vineyard this week to begin work as special photographer on the set of Jaws 2. The glitter of the silver screen has few attractions, however, for her brother Steve, 21. After rehearsing last week for the part of Tom, the young jock football player, in the film version of the '50s musical Grease, Steve decided that acting was not for him. He returned to his horse, King's Rockett, and cowpunching with friends in Newport Beach, Calif.

The ground has finally been broken for former President John F. Kennedy's library memorial near the harbor campus of the University of Massachusetts in Boston. The nine-story glass and concrete structure (estimated cost: $14 million), designed by Architect I.M. Pei, will contain some 28 million pages of presidential papers as well as other exhibits. On hand for the sod turning, each with a silver shovel, were J.F.K.'s Mother Rose, 86, Brother Edward, 45, Children Caroline, 19, and John Jr., 16, and Widow Jacqueline Onassis, 47. Referring to the long controversy over the memorial--the "townies" in Cambridge had objected to the original site near the Harvard campus--Senator Edward Kennedy said that "after 14 years at sea, our ship is coming safely into port. And what a beautiful port it is--Jack would be proud of us today."

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