You've come a long way, flying nun. From that silly television series about a novice who had an airborne habit, Sally Field landed in a serious role as Norma Rae, the Southern mill hand with a heart of steel and an eye for her union organizer. Fresh from that Academy Award performance, Field is at work in the South again in an even more down-to-earth assignment. In Back Roads, now shooting in Mobile, Ala., she plays a hooker who falls in love with a down-and-out boxer and decides to travel cross-country with him. If her roles are becoming more elemental, life for Field herself is growing more complicated. "I'm used to being the last person cast," she says, reflecting on pre-Oscar days. "Now I have the next two years planned."

Ah, godiam, la tazza e il cantico, as the spirited Alfredo sings in La Traviata. "Oh, rejoice, with wine cup and singing." That's what Cary Grant, Charlton Heston, Angie Dickinson and other members of Hollywood's elite were doing last week at Chasen's restaurant as the stars twinkled out a little starstruck themselves to meet the town's newest celebrity: famed Tenor Luciano Pavarotti, a sometime Alfredo, who is about to take four months out of a schedule almost as fully packed as he is to star in Yes, Giorgio, a comedy about an Italian singer who falls in love with an American woman. Carol Burnett produced paper and pen for his autograph, Carroll O'Connor emerged from his Archie Bunker to demonstrate a sensitive knowledge of opera, and Grant, using the word that any Cary impersonator can deliver, told Pavarotti the film would be "terrific." Luciano, sipping Campari and soda, was as excited as the guests. "I didn't sleep all night," he insisted. "These people are all my idols."

Was it the lady or the tiger? That is, which became frightened by the lights at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas where Looking to Get Out was being filmed, and who looked--successfully--for a way to get out? Well, it wasn't Ann-Margret, who stars in the movie as a prostitute with a heavy past. She remained in focus along with Co-Stars Jon Voight, Burt Young, and the magic team of Siegfried and Roy. The tiger felt better out of the glare of the klieg lights and was only reluctantly coaxed back on camera. But the temporary escape made a nice publicity Bengal for the movie, so to speak.

The last time Actress Mariette Hartley, 39, had anything to do with current events onstage was when she won an oratorical contest at Staples High School in Westport, Conn., called "The Voice of Democracy." But guess who's coming to 8.4 million U.S. homes for breakfast, electronically speaking, for the next three weeks while Today show Hostess Jane Pauley goes off to marry and honeymoon with Cartoonist Garry Trudeau? Hartley, best known for her low-key and highly successful Polaroid camera commercials with James Garner, will handle interviews and other chores as Pauley's standin. "I'm using brain cells I haven't used since college," confesses she. Of more concern to the suburban Los Angeles mother of two is temporary life in a Manhattan hotel. "How do you wake up at 5 a.m., nap from noon until 3 and still have time for the kids?"

Old English? Not exactly, admitted a Harvard spokesperson with crimson face. In lettering signs for the academic procession that would begin the university's 329th graduation, someone kneweth not how to spell. The result: places in line were saved for "candidates for honerable degrees" and "sherriffs," meaning local officials. No matter. The commencement went off in customary style with Caroline Kennedy among the 1,487 graduates and proud Mother Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis among the admiring parents, accompanied by Uncle Edward Kennedy. Venerable Telecaster Walter Cronkite, one of the eleven "honerable degree" recipients, was saluted for his "that's the way it is" approach to the news. Sheepskin in hand, Cronkite caught a plane back to New York to anchor the evening news--in which he, Caroline, Jackie, Teddy and Harvard were featured.

The last time Idi Amin Dada visited Saudi Arabia was in 1978, when he made the hadj to Mecca as a Muslim pilgrim. It rained in the desert kingdom on that occasion, and the then President-for-Life of Uganda took the rare occurrence as a sign that Allah was smiling on him. The smile has long since faded. The cruel and diabolical onetime field marshal has not only been kicked out of his own country but he is also unwelcome just about everywhere else. He and Fellow Dictator Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, who took the freshly exiled Amin in last year, had a falling out some months ago, and Big Daddy left. By trading on his Muslim faith, the onetime East African strongman has wangled what amounts to temporary asylum in Saudi Arabia.

Amin's whereabouts have been a closely guarded secret. Fellow guests in a Jidda hotel first learned of his presence when they spied 51 large suitcases and four steamer trunks in the lobby and assumed a tour group had arrived. The luggage belonged to Amin, one of his wives, a score of his children and assorted servants and bodyguards, all housed in a block of 30 rooms at the hotel. Since that time, other guests have seen the now very portly Ugandan when he emerges from his suite in swim trunks to dive into the hotel pool and swim lap after lap in a powerful and graceful crawl--after some of his offspring spend several minutes swabbing him down with suntan oil. Another pastime: listening to Scottish bagpipe music, his favorite, on a tape recorder.

When Amin ventures out of the hotel, he wears the shapeless white thobe gown and ghutra headcloth worn by most Saudi men. With the exception of a taped interview aired last week by the BBC--in which he insisted he is still well loved at home--he has refused to meet the press.

If nothing else, the sartorially sensitive ex-soldier is doing better at going Saudi than he did on his 1978 visit. Back then, he arrived dressed like a Saudi prince, except that his robes did not fit and all the accoutrements were wrong. So aghast were the Saudis that they promptly sent their guest a complete and correct new getup, accompanied by an adviser to show him how to wear it.

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