By Richard Stengel

They were like "two violent acids bubbling about in a nasty little matrimonial bottle." Divorced and remarried, they meet and fall passionately in love all over again. Liz and Dick? Well, yes, but also Amanda and Elyot, the bright and brittle lovers in Noel Coward's 1930 comedy, Private Lives. What could be more perfectly dramatic than for Elizabeth Taylor, 50, and Richard Burton, 56, to combine their ability to light a fuse with Sir Noel's talent to amuse? At a press conference in Los Angeles announcing their first joint outing on Broadway this spring, the blithe spirit of the Burton-Taylor repartee could have been orchestrated by the Master himself. Said Taylor: "Richard is one of the finest actors of this century." Burton interrupted her: "One of the . ..?" Taylor replied: "You will probably be upstaging me." Burton shot back: "No, it's downstaging, my dear, I'll have to teach you that." Whether she learns or not, it was Coward who first suggested, in 1968, that they act out their private lives in public. Coward told Burton: "I think I wrote the play for you."

The sun shines east

The sun shines west

But I've just learned

where the sun shines best

Maa-aa-aa-meee. . .

The light shines best on Peter Allen at Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall, and he knows it. In 1981, before seven sellout audiences, the campy Australian crooner rode onto the Radio City stage atop a camel This time he offers an affectionate if glitzy tribute to Al Jolson. There are 37 musicians, 36 Rockettes and a 40-ft. staircase for Allen to prance upon As a dancer, Allen makes up in perspiration what he lacks in locomotion. Is he afraid of falling from those steps? Said he: "There are 36 girls to catch me. How bad can it be?"

That baiter of British snobbery, George Bernard Shaw, once wrote, "An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable." Last week Prince Philip, that imperturbable aristocrat, was certainly uncomfortable. In the U.S. to inspect equestrian sites for the 1984 Olympics and to address the Los Angeles World Affairs Council about the International Wildlife Fund, he was invited to a soiree at the posh California Club. But the establishment, it transpired, prohibits women and has no black members. Philip's host, Mayor Thomas Bradley, refused to attend. Suddenly the club seemed rather too exclusive even for Philip's gentle blood. Being a proper guest, he deigned not to go where his host would or perhaps could not. Jolly good no-show, especially for a member of such all-boy, old-boy bastions as White's club in London.

The Lady was not able to go to the mountain (Fuji, that is), but the mountainous Takamiyama came to the Lady. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, on a visit to Asia, was ready to tussle with Japanese officials over matters of state. The Tetsu no Onna (Iron Lady) was not, however, prepared to lock arms with Japan's heftiest Sumo wrestler, Takamiyama, whose name means Mountain of the Lofty View. The 6-ft. 4-in., 448-lb. colossus, born Jesse Kahaulua in Hawaii and now a naturalized Japanese citizen, disarmed Mrs. Thatcher by cuddling her hand in his great paw. "Your hands are so soft," he said, "and your eyes are just like my mother's." Thatcher responded by awarding him a sumo cum laude on his physique. "You must be very fit," she said somewhat superfluously.

In the wilds of Washington, D.C., he has often seemed more hunted than hunter. In his native Wyoming for the annual One-Shot Antelope Hunt near the town of Lander, Secretary of the Interior James Watt was the happy warrior at home on the range. Six three-member teams competed, each hunter limited to a single shot. As the dawn mist rose off the Sweetwater River, Watt took aim through his telescopic sight at an antelope 150 yds. away. The animal loped off to the left; Watt's shot was wide. "Most of you think that I can shoot the eyes out of anything moving to the left, but not this time," said Watt. Then, like a Hemingway protagonist seeking to redeem himself, he stalked a second antelope. Though it did not count in the contest, he dropped the buck with a single shot from a standing position at 350 yds. --By Richard Stengel

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