When told that she was one of the roots of abstract art, Georgia O'Keeffe laughed: "Well, I must be one of the old roots." O'Keeffe turned 90 last week and has not slowed down. "It seems as if we have an awful lot to do, too much to do," she fretted. But to celebrate her new nonagenarian status, O'Keeffe took a minivacation from her home and studio in Abiquiu, N. Mex., and ventured east. After posing in front of one of her paintings in Washington's National Gallery, she spent her birthday strolling in the woods on a friend's New Jersey farm. Happy to return to New Mexico, she stepped off the plane and pronounced: "The stars are so much brighter here."

Professor Higgins has tossed out his tweed hat for a headdress. The star of My Fair Lady is a very different kind of gent in his latest film, Shalimar. This time Rex Harrison plays a chap called Sir John, "the world's greatest jewel thief," who lives on an island in the Indian Ocean with his own private army. "The character I play is different from the usual," says Rex. "Sir John is slightly tougher and demented and more sadistic." He is also crafty. To scare off a band of would-be murderers, he dons his mad hat and plays a witch doctor.

"I hope to get things moving," announced Franc,oise Giroud when she was appointed France's State Secretary for la Condition Feminine in 1974. Alas, Giroud, who is a co-founder of the French magazines Elle and L'Express, eventually decided that journalists have more clout in France than politicians. So, after leaving the government last March, she returned to the typewriter and banged out The Comedy of Power--a scathing attack on French politicians. As for her former boss, President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Giroud says, if "an atom bomb fell on France, he would be there to congratulate himself that there had not been two." Giroud's political career, she readily agrees, is now fini.

Hunting down photographers for a new ad campaign, Designer Bill Blass figured, why not the best? So he persuaded Sir Cecil Beaton, 73, to end his three-year retirement. Last week Britain's grand old man of photography dusted off his cameras to shoot two models decked out in creations Blass calls "very romantic, `a la Moulin Rouge." Highly positive about his negatives, Beaton says: "I shall continue to do a lot more. This was just the beginning." What made him agree to the project? "They were two very pretty dresses and two very pretty girls."

The Watergate Warbler has a different tune. John Dean has embarked on a new career as a syndicated radio commentator. The first of his tapes will go on the air Jan. 2--and Dean promises no gaps. "I view it as an opportunity and a responsibility," he says of the job. "I've had responsibility in the past, and I've blown it. I do not intend to blow it this time." Listeners will hear that familiar flat baritone sound off for three minutes, five days a week, on topics ranging from the safety of air travel to the fate of the $2 bill. Dean will also chat with Jerry Rubin on the techniques of terrorism and have another round with Connecticut Senator Lowell Weicker, this time on the future of the G.O.P. On Fridays Dean will answer mail from listeners, a feature he calls "The Right to Know."

When it comes to politics, Basketball Star Bill Bradley, 34, has never taken his eyes off the goal. As a senior at Princeton, he wrote a thesis on Harry Truman's 1940 senatorial campaign; in later years he campaigned for George McGovern and Mo Udall. Retired from the New York Knicks and fresh off the campaign trail for New Jersey Governor Brendan Byrne, Bradley has decided that it's time for his own tip-off into politics. He opened a formal bid for the U.S. Senate in his home state of New Jersey, joining at least four other Democratic hopefuls in the race. Once that was done, Bradley declined to talk about it to the press. A case of cold sneakers?

That sweet-faced woman paying no mind to the camel is secretly coveting a dead woman's jewels. Even worse, Hercule Poirot, mankind's shrewdest sleuth, suspects it. As the plot twists in the movie version of Dame Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile, the dastardly character played by Bette Davis is finally trapped by Poirot (Peter Ustinov). All this intrigue delighted Davis, but she wondered if the trip to Egypt really was necessary. Years ago, Davis recalls, there would have been no need to leave the comforts of a Hollywood back lot. Says she: "They'd have built the Nile for you, and you would never have known the difference. Nowadays, films have become travelogues and actors stunt men."

"There's no job I have really aspired to that I haven't had," reflected Elder Statesman John McCloy last week. The occasion was a dinner sponsored by the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. McCloy, 82, who has served as Assistant Secretary of War (during World War II), president of the World Bank, U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, and adviser to seven Presidents, received the institute's third Statesman-Humanist Award--which puts him in good company. The first two winners: Jean Monnet, architect of Europe's Common Market, and former German Chancellor and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Willy Brandt. As old friends Henry Kissinger, McGeorge Bundy and Robert Anderson, chairman of the institute, listened, McCloy insisted modestly that his career has been marked "more by its length than its height." He is in fact still busy, helping push the Panama Canal treaty through Congress. "It's been a fascinating life," he mused. Yet he has no plans to write an autobiography. Why? "If I could distill out of my recollections some pearly bits of wisdom, I'd go to work on them," he says. "But so far, that distillation has eluded me."

On the Record

Alan Paton, South African author, at Harvard University rapping clergymen for their silence on the subject of apartheid: "It's about time that missionary activity be directed to the white people."

Edward Brooke, Republican Senator from Massachusetts, on conditions at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: "When you go to the White House, the place looks physically dirty, people running around in jeans. It just doesn't look right."

Jimmy Carter, before attending an American Film Institute gala: "In the South, we date life either before Gone With the Wind or after. But perhaps we saw a different version than the rest of the country. One of my favorite scenes was the burning of Schenectady, New York--just before Grant surrendered to Robert E. Lee."

Walter Michael Palmers, an Austrian tycoon who was kidnaped and ransomed for $2 million, upon returning home to a crush of reporters: "Gentlemen, I am one hundred hours late for dinner. Now I must first make my excuses to my wife. You will understand that this may take some time."

Edward Teller, principal architect of the H-bomb, reflecting on his life 25 years later: "I don't give a good damn what my public image is. I have one image of myself and that is of a man who is shaving."

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