Why aren't these women smiling? Authors Nora Ephron (Crazy Salad), Erica Jong (Fear of Flying) and Francine du Piessix Gray (Lovers and Tyrants) are discussing a serious subject: women, men and money. The occasion: a Washington benefit for the Women's Campaign Fund. Gray argued that being put on a pedestal has sometimes been a severe obstacle to a woman's achieving success. Women, she said, are "the only exploited group in history who have been idealized into powerlessness." Jong agreed. "We successful women feel we are doing something unwomanly by making money," she complained. "When we try to invest it wisely instead of going out and losing it all, we tend to feel conflicted." Still, when Ephron asked her, "After you get through the dire psychological effects of having money, is it O.K.?", Jong replied, "It's wonderful!"

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She is a brassy veteran of Broadway and Hollywood, the author of five books, and she has served as a special adviser to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations--all without getting a high school diploma. "Believe me, I was a very smart cookie," says Pearl Bailey, who calls herself "more of a philosopher than an entertainer." At 59, Bailey has decided to get a college diploma, and enrolled last week at Washington, D.C.'s Georgetown University, where she plans to major in French and squeeze in classes in Islam, Egyptian art and philosophy. Drama is out, she says, because "I took it 40 years of my life." At registration, she was presented with front-row seats to school basketball games--and a book of freebie burger coupons.

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SEAMY SEX IS OUT, TRUE LOVE IS IN, declares the February cover of the District of Columbia's regional monthly, the Washingtonian. One of the authorities for this, er, turn of affairs in the nation's capital is the issue's cover girl, Elizabeth Ray, once famous as former Congressman Wayne Hays' nubile secretary who couldn't type. Says she in the accompanying story: "I see a lot of changes since I worked in Washington. Now the men I go out with care about the little things--flowers, smiles, just being nice."

In spite of all that, Ray has moved to Manhattan, where she is studying acting with Lee Strasberg and readying a nightclub act. She plans to tell a joke about Richard Nixon's effort to replace Rose Mary Woods. He wanted, it seems, "someone who could erase 120 words per minute."

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By day, Stuntman Evel Knievel prepared for his next extravaganza, a 40,000-ft. jump into a haystack--sans parachute. By night, he rested up in his cell at the Los Angeles County Jail, where he was serving a six-month sentence for attacking a writer with a baseball bat. Such an arrangement was sanctioned by California's "work-furlough" program. But the daredevil's habit of riding to and from jail in a chauffeur-driven Stutz convertible--and offering Cadillac limousine service to his fellow inmates "as a gesture of friendship"--irked the authorities. After Knievel returned five hours late one night, he lost his work-furlough status during the four remaining months of his sentence, and his chances of parole. "This is the way it should be," Knievel responded. "What I did was against the laws of society, but I did it and I'm willing to serve the penalty for it."

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It sounds like a novel: a Texas oil tycoon with a wife and children conceals his identity and bigamously marries a woman from Tampa, Fla. Nine years later, she finds out about the other family, leaves the oilman, and eventually signs an agreement to keep quiet in return for a $100,000 payoff and another $2,000 per month. Such was the story told in a Shreveport, La., courtroom by Frania Tye Lee, 73, who married H.L. Hunt in 1925, believing he was a "Franklin Hunt." In a lawsuit, Lee asked to be recognized as Hunt's onetime wife, and sought half the wealth he had accumulated during their nine years of marriage. (His worth, which was estimated at $2 billion at his death in 1974, was about $15 million when they parted.) Why had she signed an agreement in 1942 to hush up the matter? "Women in love are not philosophers, nor do they know about the law," she told the court. Before the case went to the jury, lawyers for the Hunt estate and Lee came to an out-of-court settlement. The reported terms: $7.5 million for the complainant.

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For a woman with her feet planted firmly on the ground, Shannon Lucid has taken an extraterrestrial step. The research associate at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation is now an astronaut candidate, one of the first six women selected by NASA for that honor. (Three blacks and a Japanese American were also among the 35 new candidates chosen last week.) "I predate Sputnik and was interested in space as a child," says Lucid, 35, who is married to a chemist and the mother of three. Beginning next July, Lucid and the other astronauts will undergo two years of basic training in Houston, then prepare to join a space-shuttle crew. "I never doubted that I could be as competent as anyone in space," shrugs Lucid. Her galactic goal: a solo walk in space.

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The invitations, suitably enough, arrived in a brown paper bag. They were for the Chicago opening of a musical based on Working, Author Studs Terkel's 1974 bestseller. Directed by Composer Stephen Schwartz (Pippin, God spell), the play is a working man's Chorus Line telling, in separate episodes, the stories of such characters as a steelworker, a supermarket checker, a teacher, a switchboard operator and a parking-lot attendant. The cast exuberantly hauls around ladders, scaffolds and dollies to tunes written for the show by James Taylor and others. The message? Says Terkel, whose book was based on 135 taped interviews: "Working people are brighter than we think. Their jobs may be drab, but they transcend them." Terkel is beginning another oral history about "more intangible things, what happens to our dreams as kids, illusion and disillusion." The title: American Dreams: Lost & Found.

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"O.K., Tom. Tie score, bases loaded, two out, ninth inning, full count. Let's see what you got," barks the Red Sox' greatest slugger, Ted Williams. Cincinnati Reds Star Hurler Tom Seaver tosses a pitch, and Terrible Ted trots calmly to first base. The scene at Williams' alma mater, Hoover High School in San Diego, will air in the spring on the syndicated TV show Greatest Sports Legends, to which Seaver is playing host this year. At lunch in Manhattan to pitch the show, Williams, 59, who in his heyday earned $125,000 a year, defended today's well-bankrolled athletes, like, say, the $500,000-plus-a-year Reggie Jackson. "I'm envious," sighed the Kid. "I wish I'd a bit more business sense when I was playing."

On the Record

Emmylou Harris, country rock singer, describing the album she will make with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt: "We will aim for some things people might not expect us to do. We will put it in the big Cuisinart and see what comes out."

Michael Noakes, one of Britain's royal portraitists, describing the travails of painting Elizabeth II: "Once she has chosen a pose, it's difficult to know how much one can ask her to modify it. Can you say 'Put more weight on the other foot' to the Queen?"

Harry Bridges, retired president of the International Longshoremen's Union, talking about accepting help from Communist groups for the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike: "We wasn't fancy. We'd take support from anywhere we could get it."

Meldrim Thomson Jr., New Hampshire's arch-conservative Governor, on why he turned down an invitation to visit the People's Republic: "I will take no part in giving aid and comfort to Communist China by lending the prestige of Governor for a baby-carriage guided tour of the enemy's homeland."

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