By E. Graydon Carter

The Fade-In. Ragtime piano, please. Former Heavyweight Champ Gene Tunney has long since hung up his Everlasts for a career in business by the time his son is born. The kid spars a bit as a youngster but eventually picks politics over pugilism, becoming California Senator John Tunney, 47. The Hook. John, now an ex-Senator, is asked to portray his late father in Sting II, the follow-up to the 1973 original, The Sting. It stars Jackie Gleason, 65, and Mac Davis, 40, in the snap-brim, wing-tipped, confidence-man roles created by Paul Newman and Robert Redford. The Cameo. Playing papa in retirement, John's scene calls for him to grin as he is introduced in a crowded fight arena. The Fade-Out. "I climbed into the ring and waved at the screaming crowd," says John of his scene. "The roar of the crowd, the flush of blood--the sap begins to flow through the branches. It was enough to make one want to get back into politics again."

A compact 5 ft. 5 1/2 in. and 115 Ibs. of muscle and hustle on the tennis court, Chris Evert Lloyd, 27, does have a softer side. Chris happily shucked her court gear when Glamour magazine asked her to play fashion model for its February issue. According to the magazine, the five-time U.S. Open winner favors "good travelers, versatile enough for sudden climate changes." Among the outfits that seemed to fill the bill: a $256 red silk dress by Andre Van Pier and a pair of $175 gold La Marca pumps. "Physically, I'm in better shape than when I was 17," says Chris, before adding, with a hint of wistfulness, "but being 27 isn't like being 17."

Just three days after the city of Pittsburgh honored him as its sportsman of the year, University of Pittsburgh Head Football Coach Jackie Sherrill, 38, jumped to Texas A & M as new head coach and athletic director. Sherrill's clipboard and whistle will earn him an estimated average annual salary of $280,000 over the next six years, making him the highest-paid employee on any of the nation's campuses. Sherrill breezed through his third 11-1 record in a row this past season, but his hitch in College Station, Texas, may be bumpy. Texas A & M scraped through a 7-5 record last year. Life at home should be smooth. Says Sherrill: "When I returned home from Texas, my wife Daryle said, 'I always wanted to marry a millionaire.' "

Never mind the razor cut, the evening attire, the boutonniere or the cigar. Even in a longshoreman's outfit, Julie Andrews, 46, would look like, well, Julie Andrews. Nevertheless, in the film Victor/Victoria, directed by her husband Blake Edwards (10, S.O.B.), 59, and due out in April, a thin attempt has been made to disguise Julie with a crossover coiffure and habiliments. Andrews is cast as an impoverished opera singer who happens upon a fellow entertainer of uncertain sexual orientation, played by Robert Preston (The Music Man), 63. He suggests that Andrews disguise herself as a man, then tromp the boards as a female impersonator--even though she is a female. Get it? The stratagem works nicely until a Chicago mobster, played with mustachioed slickness by James Garner (The Rockford Files), 53, catches Andrews' act one evening and is smitten. Just another nice, old-fashioned plot: girl meets boy-girl and becomes girl-boy-girl and meets another boy who . . . aw, forget it.

--By E. Graydon Carter

On the Record

Kevin White, 52, Boston mayor, on why he paid his wife $19,000 out of campaign funds: "She said she's worth $50,000. But I couldn't afford that."

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 54, New York's Democratic Senator, trying to convey the horror of nuclear weapons: "Twenty Americans died at Yorktown. In the Napoleonic Wars, the British navy lost scarcely 6,000 men. How are we to think of civilization disappearing in an hour's time? Hard and carefully, that is how."

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