On the Record

Hollywood could not do better. A paunchy, rich Italian producer turns a voluptuous, poverty-stricken actress into an international star, marries her and moves with her to Paris. But the Italian authorities accuse them of illegally taking $6 million out of the country. After lengthy legal proceedings, the producer is sentenced to four years in prison and fined $26.4 million. His wife, however, is acquitted. Such have been the real-life ups and downs for Carlo Ponti and Sophia Loren. Since Ponti is now a French citizen, it is highly unlikely that he will ever be sent to jail. As for the fine, he may have to pay a small part of it. The word from Ponti's lawyers: an immediate appeal.

"Dance is not only ballet. It's everything and everywhere," says Dame Margot Fonteyn, who ought to know. Britain's prima ballerina has narrated a six-part BBC series, The Magic of Dance, scheduled to air in the U.S. in the fall. To film the show, Fonteyn, 59, visited a ballet school in Peking, chatted with Fred Astaire in Los Angeles and inter viewed Nijinsky's daughter in Manhattan. Outside Athens, she saw the remains of a "temple of dance" built in 1904 by flamboyant American Dancer Isadora Duncan. "Isadora had a passion for children, and now the Greek children run in and out of the ruins," says Dame Margot. "They don't care whose house it is."

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat managed to hog the rug, but Gerald Ford didn't seem to mind not getting the full red-carpet treatment on his first visit to the Middle East. In Egypt, the former President stayed at the Aswan Oberoi along with another tourist, the Shah of Iran. Ford, accompanied by his wife Betty, also stopped off in Israel. "I came as a private citizen," he said, and hence felt little compunction about beating a hasty retreat from a dinner with Premier Menachem Begin. After all, Private Citizen Ford had a date to watch the Super Bowl via a special satellite hookup.

Norman Mailer's right hand doesn't always know what his famous left is doing. The truculent author of The Armies of the Night appeared in a Barnstable, Mass., courtroom last week to haggle over finances in the divorce proceedings brought against him by his fourth wife, Beverly. Mailer couldn't explain how he had frittered away several hundred thousand dollars. "My talent is to make money, not to manage it," he said. Beverly, who is asking for $1,000 a week alimony, has her own quirks, such as her temper. "We had 26 maids in a year. She wanted perfection," Mailer complained. "Do you call that a crime?" asked Mrs. Mailer's attorney. Norman's rejoinder: "No, I call it a pity."

When politics seems to have no rhyme or reason, George Ball, former Under Secretary of State, and recently special consultant to the National Security Council, tries his hand at poetry. Sample lyrics from Pious Thoughts for the Christmas Season, a collection of eight poems sent to family and friends:

Taiwan Requiem

Though human rights

are now quite chic

And we profess to guard

the weak

Let's not deny it when

we reek

Of classic Realpolitik!

Human Rights Lullaby

Though we gave up our

gendarme's berth

As we became more

canny

And so no longer police

the earth

We've become the

world's nanny.

Reflections on the E.R.A.

I wonder if our new

estate

Will alter nature's

laws;

Will wopersons still

personstruate

Until personopause ?

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