On the Record

By Claudia Wallis

Ready or not, Hollywood is greasing the way for another John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. Newcomers Michelle Pfeiffer and Maxwell Caulfield, both 22, have been cast in a sequel to the $181 million blockbuster musical Grease. With familiar Tinseltown inventiveness, the new film has been titled Grease 2. More than 500 actors competed for the leads. "There were so many talented people that it became just looks and chemistry," concedes Pfeiffer, a looker. Caulfield, an Englishman who is married to Actress Juliet Mills, 40, feels the musical "will be as good as if not better than the original." Says he, in the parlance of Grease's Rydell High School: "It's a really neat story."

Jean Stapleton met Eleanor Roosevelt only once, in 1953, when the former First Lady paid a backstage visit to the Chicago cast of Come Back, Little Sheba. "Everyone was so awed that she had to make all the small talk," recalls TV's Edith Bunker. "And that smile. I could never forget it." Evidently, she not only remembered it but was able to reproduce it for a two-hour CBS special on Eleanor's first years as a U.N. delegate (1945-46). In fact, Londoners were stunned when they saw the actress's commanding figure step out of a period cab at Claridge's Hotel. "Who's that?" asked one Briton. "That's Eleanor Roosevelt," a friend replied. Gasped the first: "I didn't know she was still alive."

Question: What soars high above a treetop with an open umbrella? Answer: Barbara ("Mary Poppins") Bush. That's the way the Second Lady billed herself after braving high altitude and Washington rain to top the national Christmas tree with a star on the Ellipse south of the White House. To crown the 30-ft. Colorado Spruce, Bush was given a lift in a cherry picker. The task comes with her job, she says: "Vice Presidents' wives go to funerals and top Christmas trees." They do not, however, light the evergreens. On Dec. 17, Ronald Reagan will perform that service.

"This is the most successful commercial in history, and it's all done with amateurs," boasts Mickey Spillane, detective novelist and sometime pitchman for Miller Lite beer. Spillane concedes, however, that the high jinks that accompany the filming "would drive regular actors up the wall." Last week Spillane and pals gathered at a bowling alley in Teaneck, N.J., to shoot another of the award-winning spots. Those present included Comedian Rodney Dangerfield, Actress Lee Meredith, Boston Celtics President Red Auerbach, former Oakland Raiders Coach John Madden, ex-Baltimore Slugger Boog Powell and retired New York Jet Matt Snell. Off-camera the jocks disputed the merits of their various sports. "The baseball people make fun of football, and the football people make fun of baseball," says Madden. None of the high spirits were brew-inspired, he said, adding: "We never drink the props."

On the Record

Senator Orrin Hatch, Utah Republican, commenting on Government regulations that prescribe the thickness of hamburger condiments: "I sleep so much better at night, knowing that America is protected from thin pickles and fast ketchup."

Stephen Sondheim, songwriter, directing a recording session of Merrily We Roll Along, his musical that folded in two weeks: 'Sing it with disappointment rather than anger."

He has outlasted most of the rulers who were his contemporaries and governed the world's largest country longer than anyone but Stalin. Yet the private life of Leonid Brezhnev, like that of most Soviet higher-ups, is among the most carefully guarded of state secrets. There are no handy biographical sources in the Soviet Union. When Brezhnev came to power in 1964, Westerners were unable at first to determine even the basic facts. Was his wife named Lyudmila or Victoria? (It is the latter.) Did he have two children or three? (Western sources say three, though Soviet references list only two.)

Pictorial glimpses of the Soviet first family are also hard to come by. Victoria, 74, is rarely seen in public. This month, however, TASS released several informal photographs of the President, some of them en famille. The portraits--of a seemingly contented, still vigorous man--happen to coincide with the renewal of Soviet-American arms limitation talks in Geneva, but the timing was governed by the approach of Brezhnev's 75th birthday, on Dec. 19.

Three of the photos were taken at his Crimean retreat on the Black Sea. The villa, never seen by Western journalists, is at historic Livadiya, site of the 1945 Yalta Conference. The Soviet leader vacations there each summer, lengthening his stays as he grows older.

To adorn the public album of his private life, he has chosen Galya, 8, his only greatgrandchild. The Brezhnevs' children are Galina, about 50, once married to a circus animal trainer and now the wife of Yuri Churbanov, First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs; Yuri, 48, a Deputy Foreign Trade Minister; and Mikhail, 44, a journalist of whom little is known. There are three grandchildren: Yuri's sons Leonid, 25, and Andrei, 20, and Galina's daughter Victoria (Galya's mother). Brezhnev seems to have spent little time with them. In a candid moment, he once talked about his relationship with his son Yuri. "We don't see each other much," said Brezhnev, "because of work--his and mine." --By Claudia Wallis

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