"My colleagues will hate me for saying it," says Hungarian-born Dancer Ivan Nagy, 35, "but the ballet is the original women's liberation profession. It is created for females." The impeccable partner to such ballerinas as Dame Margot Fonteyn and Natalia Makarova, Nagy is now planning to retire from the American Ballet Theater before weary leg muscles make him earthbound. Pouts Makarova: "He is the most lyrical dancer, and I will miss him." What will Nagy miss the most? "When I am dancing with a woman onstage and it works, I feel that I love her, and that sort of love simply does not exist offstage."

"I missed fighting with Mike Wallace," says Harry Reasoner. "Safer and Rather are also top professionals, and I'm sure I'll learn to fight with them too." One of the original co-anchors of CBS's 60 Minutes, Reasoner is back now as the news show's fourth correspondent, following eight years at ABC. Wallace is ready for Harry's return: "I don't know why he's so anxious to fight with me again--in years v past he always lost. Besides, I ' no longer fight lightweights."

To help out local Republican candidates, Richard and Pat Nixon threw a $250-a-person fund-raising party at La Casa Pacifica, which brought in about $100,000. Nixon reminisced about his memories of Orange County--the time he proposed to Pat at Dana Point and the days when he practiced law at La Habra. One of the most exuberant guests was John Wayne. Greeting the Missus with a bow and a kiss on the hand, the Duke said, "It's great to see Pat up and around and looking happy." As for her husband, the Duke enthused: "I was with the ex-President when he was a winner and a loser and a winner again."

Talk about strange bedfellows. There were Feminists Valerie Harper, Jean Stapleton and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke clustered around their hosts, Hugh Hefner and his daughter Christie, who were throwing a $100-a-plate dinner in support of the Equal Rights Amendment. Reasoned the president of Playboy Enterprises, Inc.: "Playboy is clearly a major factor in the sexual revolution. And clearly the social-sexual revolution is related to the women's movement." Nor were the feminists shy about accepting Hef's hospitality. Said Burke: "The people we have to get to support ERA are some of Hefner's constituents." Apparently his money doesn't hurt, either: his party netted $25,000.

Italian Film Director Bernardo Bertolucci was back in his home town of Parma, scouting locations for his new movie, La Luna, starring Jill Clayburgh. Seeing perhaps with the eyes of his imagination, the director stumbled over a No Parking sign and broke both his elbows. Not one to let so minor an inconvenience as arm-length casts deter him, Bertolucci was back on the set in two weeks, using a long wooden holder for his view finder. "When I started to direct this film," he said, "I already had a heavy responsibility as director and co-author of the screenplay, and had a part in the production of the film. Now it's an even heavier responsibility with the casts."

On the Record

Margaret Thatcher, British Tory leader: "You cannot have national welfare before someone has created national wealth."

Henry Kissinger, on his forthcoming autobiography: "I have written a thousand pages, and I am not even through my bachelor days."

Gloria Steinem, speaking to the American Psychological Association: "The average secretary in the U.S. is better educated than the average boss."

Malcolm Cowley, literary critic (Exile's Return, Writers at Work), on the affinity between writing and drinking: "I don't know that writers as a class drink more heavily than actors, advertising men, painters, one type of salesmen, or any other manics who want to be brilliant and self-assured."

Theodore H. White, reporter and author (In Search of History), on why he doesn't use a tape recorder for interviewing: "I like to give everyone what I call White's final option--the option of denying they ever said anything to me."

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