By Claudia Wallis

Few new Presidents have spent much time posing for the portrait-bearing gold medal they get as an Inaugural gift. But Ronald Reagan not only agreed to three sittings, he had a life mask made. Only Abe Lincoln, whose likeness was sculpted in 1860, had been so masochistic. For 20 minutes the President-elect sat motionless, slathered crown to collarbone with silicone goop, straws jutting from his ears and nostrils. After the 20-minute ordeal, Sculptor Edward Fraughton pronounced him a model model: "He's used to being made up." But not quite so heavily. "Boys," cracked Reagan, "there's one take on this --that's it!"

"Please keep this under your Stetson," read Barbara Sinatra's invitation, "but I'm tossing a surprise birthday party for my blue-eyed cowboy." Cary Grant, the Fred Astaires, the Gregory Pecks, Spiro Agnew, the Johnny Carsons and 200 others were on hand to greet the guest of honor at his own spread in Rancho Mirage, Calif., under a tent rigged with saloon-style bars, cacti, a bandstand and spittoons. Old Blue Eyes was delighted: "I'm gushing with happiness," said he. Guess when a man turns 65, it's time to hoe down.

"Acting is much like professional football," observes Norman Mailer, writer and sometime thespian. So when it came time to film his big scene in the movie Ragtime--wherein his character, Architect Stanford White, is assassinated by Millionaire Harry K. Thaw (Robert Joy)--the star got the pre-game jitters, "not because I was being shot, but because I might let the team down." He died like a pro. As the bullets flew, he slumped convincingly over a table, then rolled to the floor. His comely companion cried holy murder, which made Mailer especially proud. She is his sixth and current wife Norris Church, 31. Said he: "Did you hear her? Weren't those just the loudest possible screams?"

"Not ... all girl-children [are] nymphets," wrote Vladimir Nabokov in Lolita. Few indeed have the "fey grace... the slenderness of a downy limb" and other nascent charms so dear to a Humbert Humbert. Edward Albee, who is staging a drama based on the novel, chose Blanche Baker over hundreds of preteens to play eleven-year-old Lo to Donald Sutherland's fortyish Humbert. Blanche is 24, but well qualified. She was virtually born for the role: her mother, Carroll Baker, won stardom 24 years ago as the sensuous heroine of Baby Doll. As for Blanche's advanced age, she says: "I don't think a child actress could understand the unconscious sexuality of Lolita. At eleven, I didn't understand eleven.'' -- By Claudia Wallis

On the Record

John Kenneth Galbraith, 72, liberal economist, on the pleasure of Conservative William F. Buckley Jr.'s company: "With Bill, you don't have to think. He takes a position, and you automatically take the opposite one, and you know you're right."

William E. Colby, 59, former CIA director, repenting the agency's use of organized-crime figures in an early '60s Castro assassination plot: "You couldn't find a more inept crowd than the Mafia."

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