On the Record

"I'm very proud of the pint of Scottish blood in me," says Rod Stewart, 38, something of an expert on pints. "I'd give anything for a true Scots accent." The son of a Scottish-born laborer, Stewart gargles with a working-class London rasp that will never fool them in the Highlands, but his recently tailored kilt (Stewart clan) would certainly baffle the groupies in Bel-Air. His tartan roots have the rock star a wee bit nervous about playing Glasgow during his current seven-month, 51-city world tour. "It's my heritage," says Stewart. "That's where I have to hold my head up high." Och, laddie, dinna worry. Just sweetly sing in tune.

If not exactly the pinnacle of his career, the 60th birthday party for former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger did turn out to be a summit of sorts. Invited by his onetime student, Harvard Lecturer Guido Goldman, to wine and dine the evening away at New York City's Pierre Hotel last week, the 400 guests included such luminaries as former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, former President Gerald Ford, Secretary of State George Shultz and the widows of the Shah of Iran, Anwar Sadat, Lyndon Johnson and Nelson Rockefeller. Asked how he felt about getting older, Kissinger remained loyal to his generation. "When I was young, I thought people who were 60 were of another species," said the new sexagenarian. "Now I think the young are."

"I'm better than my movies," Comedian Richard Pryor, 43, once said. All too often critics unhappily agreed. If Pryor's films do not live up to his potential in the future, however, he'll have no one but himself to blame. The star of such box office hits as Bustin' Loose and Stir Crazy has just signed a $40 million contract with Columbia Pictures that a studio spokesman describes as "one of the best deals in the industry today." The agreement gives Pryor the chance to write, produce and act in four films over the next five years, with total control unless he goes over budget. He will also star in three more pictures for an additional paycheck in the uptown neighborhood of $ 15 million. His first project, The Charlie Parker Story, based on the life of the great jazz saxophonist, is due to start shooting in October. It will be followed by Double Whoopee, reuniting Pryor with Funnyman Gene Wilder. The poolroom "stroker from Peoria," as he used to call himself, is finally in a perfect position to run the table.

It's not every day that a raving beauty gets to play a ravening crow. So Actress-Photographer Candice Bergen, 37, hopped at the chance to portray the evil sorceress Morgan le Fay in a three-hour CBS epic due this fall called Arthur the King, based on the Round Table legend. "I was relieved not to play the phlegmatic princess," says Bergen. "I like taking things in my own hands." Or talons. Dressed in a darkly feathered cape and one of the alltime great fright wigs, Bergen as Morgan swoops and plots against her half-brother Arthur, played by Malcolm McDowell. "I cast spells, fly, disappear at will and have a dungeon that looks like a fully equipped gym. It's every girl's dream," she laughs. Indeed, the only thing she won't do is scare people away with her looks. Admits Bergen: "I'm not wizened with warts. I'm more of a New Wave witch."

If home is where the heart is, Actor Jimmy Stewart, 75, was in the right place last week when his boyhood town of Indiana, Pa. (pop. 16,000), threw a three-day birthday party in his honor. To celebrate the return of its leading man, Indiana poured on the Americana, with parades, air shows, harness races and ribbon cuttings. The high point of the festivities came when city elders unveiled a 9-ft. statue of its favorite son. Drawled the still gangly, 6-ft. 2 1/2in. Stewart: "This is sort of where I made up my mind about things, about hard work and the value of it, about family, about community and the place of the church in a fellow's life." And perhaps also about the renewing usefulness of returning to one's roots.

The phalanx of photographers, TV cameramen and reporters eagerly awaiting her arrival outside the British Museum last week must have reminded Melina Mercouri, 57, of her heady days as one of Europe's leading actresses. But in her current role as Greece's Minister of Culture, Mercouri was seeking publicity not for herself but for a favorite cause: the Elgin Marbles, which were the Acropolis Marbles before the Seventh Earl of Elgin removed them in 1801 with the agreement of the occupying Turkish Ottoman Empire. Athens says it wants them back; the British say that the Greeks have, terribly sorry, permanently lost then-marbles. During her tour of the museum, Mercouri admitted that the priceless sculptures were "very well kept. But on foreign earth." Did she really think Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would ever allow the marbles to leave Britain? Replied Mercouri with Mediterranean magnificence: "Why not? She's a woman."

At times it seems that the spotlight at college graduations is directed not at the expectant graduates but at celebrity speakers and recipients of honorary degrees. Some of the scholarly glamour was visible last week at Stonehill College in North Easton, Mass., as well as at Vassar and Yale. At Stonehill, Bianca Jagger, 38, former wife of Rock Star Mick, was awarded an honorary doctorate for humanitarian work in her native Nicaragua and in El Salvador and Honduras. Recalling her 1981 adventures as a jungle paparazzo in Honduras with two friends, she told of rescuing a group of refugee hostages from a band of armed guerrillas. "We had no weapons, but we had a camera, and we used that as a weapon," she said. "I guess they felt we could do them harm if our pictures were shown. The people were let go." Meanwhile, over at the Vassar campus in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Alumna and two-time Academy Award-winner Meryl Streep, 34, gave the commencement address and credited her alma mater with instilling in her "a taste for excellence." But, she added in a cautionary note, "if you can live with the devil, Vassar has not sunk its teeth into you." He would have to catch up first. The next day Streep was off to New Haven to pick up an honorary degree in fine arts from Yale, where she had done graduate work at the drama school.

"I waited a lifetime, more than 30 years, to hear those three words, 'Mrs. Howard Hughes.' " And the three words were worth perhaps eight figures to Terry Moore, 54, actress (Peyton Place, Come Back Little Sheba) and Korean War pinup girl. Back when she was a starlet in 1949, Moore maintains, she and Billionaire Hughes, then 43, were secretly married on a sailing trip to Mexico and were never legally divorced, even though he remarried at least once and she has since married and divorced three other men. After Hughes' death in 1976, Moore went public with her claim, which was pending before the Nevada supreme court last week when the other heirs to Hughes' estimated $2 billion agreed to pay her an undisclosed settlement within six weeks. The sum will be enough, said Moore, "to live comfortably on the interest for the rest of my life." But she has further plans, including adding a new final chapter to a tale-telling book on her open-ended marriage. As for Hughes' other heirs, 24 relatives of varying closeness, they may at last get their shares, since Moore's claim was the last major obstacle to the distribution of his estate. --By Guy D. Garcia

On the Record

Sally Ride, 32, astronaut set to be the first U.S. woman in space on the second voyage of the shuttle Challenger, asked at a press conference if she will weep in tough situations: "Why doesn't anyone ask Rick [Hauck, her fellow astronaut] those questions?"

Paul Weitz, 50, crew member on the 1973 Skylab mission and commander of the first Challenger voyage last April, on the early astronauts' descriptions of the earth as "a beautiful blue marble": "It was blue in the beginning, and now it's a gray planet. What's the message? We are fouling our nest." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.