By Claudia Wallis

And who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fought a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American Way? Christopher Reeve, of course. Faster than a speeding bullet, Reeve finished making Superman II and leaped to Williamstown, Mass., for a summer-stock revival of the 1928 classic, The Front Page. He may have ducked into a phone booth to change to period costume, but he has not left journalism. As Hildy Johnson, not-so-mild-mannered reporter for the Chicago Herald-Examiner, he fights a never-ending battle to prevent truth from getting in the way of a good story. "It's really just a coincidence that I am playing a lot of reporters," the newshound insisted before an opening-night performance that was--what else?--more powerful than a locomotive.

It started as a casual conversation between two neighbors in the country. The subject: whom to cast in Ragtime, the film based on the 1975 E.L. Doctorow bestseller. "How about you, James?" said the movie's director, Milos Forman, to the owner of the 800-acre New York cattle farm near Forman's place in Warren, Conn. "Well," replied the farmer after considerable reflection, "let's do it." And so, 20 years after his "final" screen appearance in One, Two, Three, James Cagney, 81, was back before the cameras last week in Brooklyn, looking spry in the turn-of-the-century waxed mustache and muttonchops of New York City Police Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo. Said the old hardy hoofer: "The doctors said I should do something to keep me busy."

"We'll probably get flak for selling out," sighs Deborah Harry, the peroxided lead singer of Blondie. But given the mega-figure offer she got to model Murjani jeans, perhaps the iconoclastic fans of rock s new wave will understand why their darling became a tool of bourgeois fashion. Taping her second TV commercial for the hot-selling trousers, Blondie's blond took a philosophical view of her new ad venture. "I have been promoting the greatest American product, rock 'n' roll. Now," she explains, she is into "promoting another great American product, jeans." Into them very nicely. Never mind that Murjani's products are made in Hong Kong.

No one at New York's Saratoga race track made much of it at first, what with the fracas over the sudden withdrawal of Derby Winner Genuine Risk from the week's big race. But gradually word slipped out that another star was present. Riding an uninspiring gelding, Rubla Khan, in the third was none other than Mrs. Fred Astaire, back from a month's postnuptial vacation for what she says will be her final year in silks. "This is my favorite track," says the 35-year-old jockey, a.k.a. Robyn Smith. "It's the oldest in America. I was the first woman to ride here ten years ago." Smith will spend next spring on the race courses of Europe and then, reluctantly, hang up her spurs. "Fred," she explains, "thinks riding horses is dangerous. It isn't, but he is my No. 1 priority. I like to keep him happy."

On the Record

Beverly Sills, on the transition from singing to running the New York City Opera company: "Now, instead of two vocal cords, I have to worry about 300."

Halston, fashion designer, on Chinese couture: "I think it's something when you can dress a whole nation in one thing."

Lin Murphy, mountain climber and IRS lawyer, on what she hopes to find at the top of treacherous Dhaulagiri in the Himalayas this month: "Something that's new and undiscovered. Something that's unregulated and isn't taxed."

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