By E. Graydon Carter

For the stricken star of Tootsie, due out later this year, making the film has been a complete drag. "His breasts fall down. The high heels hurt his feet. The makeup causes pimples, and the heat makes his beard show through after a couple of hours," says sympathetic Director Sydney Pollack. The breast-fallen lady he is referring to is that model of middle-aged primness, Dustin Hoffman, 44. In Tootsie, the actor renowned for his demanding perfectionism plays an actor so renowned for his demanding perfectionism that he finally has to go into distaff disguise to get a part. Tales of Hoffman's adventures in the role abound. At Manhattan's Russian Tea Room on a lunch break, Hoffman--still in costume and makeup--stopped by the table of an old friend, Public Relations Man John Springer. Dustin introduced himself as Dorothy Michaels, an aspiring post-ingenue from Kansas City. Says Springer, who did not twig to the put-on: "I knew there was something fascinating about the woman. I just didn't know what."

It is good to see old friends back together again. First Paul McCartney, 39, worked on three songs for Stop & Smell the Roses, the recent album of fellow ex-Beatle Ringo Starr, 41. Then Paul decided that what the package needed was a brief video musical to go with the tunes. With Ringo's wife Barbara Bach, 35, and Linda McCartney, 39, he and Ringo made The Cooler, an eleven-minute featurette set in a futuristic prison policed entirely by women. Cooler stars Starr as a habitual escapee, with McCartney hamming his way through three roles, including one with dyed blond hair. Says Co-Director Lol Creme, assaying his employers' on-screen talents: "Ringo and Barbara have done light comedy before. Paul wanted to dress up and was game for just about anything." As long as he had a little help from his friends.

May we have the pay envelopes, please? According to Forbes magazine, Steve Ross, 54, chief executive officer of Warner Communications, is the highest-paid corporate chief in the U.S. For his efforts, Ross last year pulled down an estimated $22.5 million in wages, benefits and the increased value of his stock. Meanwhile, Women's Wear Daily notes that the income figures of U.S. designers are scarcely scanty. Calvin Klein, 39, tops in bottoms, etc., will take $15 million off the rack this year, estimates WWD, and Ralph Lauren, 42, is close behind at $12 million. The money paid to college football coaches was also being checked out. Last week the Miami Herald reported that as the best-paid coach in the U.S., Alabama's Paul ("Bear") Bryant, 68, collects close to $450,000 a year from salary, television and radio sources, and various perquisites. That sum is well above the $240,000 that the Herald says is going annually to the third-highest-paid coach, Texas A&M's Jackie Sherrill, 38, whose six-year deal last January kicked up such a dust storm of criticism.

And now, from that lovely little town right up the street from Hollywood, the home of the hot tub and the avocado salad, Mariska Hargitay, 18, this year's Miss Beverly Hills. Mariska is the offspring of Actress Jayne Mansfield, who died when her daughter was three years old, and Mickey Hargitay, a former body builder turned real estate investor. Following in her mother's footsteps, young Hargitay will enter U.C.L.A. next fall, where she will be a theater arts major. Her 36-24-36 frame may lack some of the oomph of her mother's famed 40-18-36 curves, but Mariska feels that maternal comparisons are onerous. An immediate goal is related to an old title of her father's. "My dad was Mr. Universe," she says, "so it would be fun for me to be Miss Universe."

--ByE. Gray don Carter

On the Record

Edwin Netter, 49, counselor at South Commack High School in Long Island, N.Y., on how student-aid cutbacks are affecting applicants to expensive colleges: "We always get tears in the guidance office for rejection. This year it's from kids who are getting accepted."

Lloyd Cutler, 64, former White House counsel, on the legal profession: "We have not convinced the public of our intellectual honesty. We are regarded as more canny than candid, more as servants of our prince, as mouthpieces or hired guns, than as servants of our consciences."

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