People

By Guy D. Garcia

"See this future king any time he shows up at your local shopping-mall multiplex cinema," raved Chicago Tribune Film Critic Gene Siskel, who gave Prince Charles four stars for his U.S. performance. As for Diana, John Travolta rated the Princess of Wales 10 out of 10 after a smashing Saturday Night Fever pas de deux that stopped other White House dancers in their tracks. "I tried to do my fanciest footwork with her," said the still glowing actor afterward. "We did well together." Of her much discussed clothes, Couturier Geoffrey Beene observed in the New York Times: "Some of the design is not on target to me as a professional, but who cares? Her presence overcomes any banalities of dress." The London Express's royal watcher Jean Rook concluded, "She has given America what it craved, glamour, glitz . . . Dianasty." There were some fluffed lines, to be sure. At the White House banquet, President Reagan introduced her first as "Princess David," then "Princess Diane." For his part, Charles spoke briefly and sat down, forgetting for a second to give his toast. In Palm Beach, Fla., on the last leg of the Waleses' four-day visit, Charles' team stylishly won an exhibition polo match, but later at a $5,000-a-head charity ball for United World Colleges arranged by Oil Tycoon Armand Hammer, there were some tacky touches. Those who paid an extra $20,000 got to stand with the royal couple for a souvenir snapshot. The local Establishment snubbed the do, partly because Russophile Hammer and his nonlocal charity were considered not the right sort. Still, the audiences of royal freaks and Dihard fans who formed at their every stop will remember best the bright moments: Diana clutching at one of her flying-saucer hats as a sudden gust of wind tried to launch it, or the Prince, tongue in cheek, declining to speak for his wife for fear she would be cross with him later. The pair inserted some nice adlibs into the script. Upon being presented with a quilt at one stop, Charles asked, "Is it king-size or queen-size?" Explaining his resistance to jet lag, he noted, "It's all in the breeding, you know." When Clint Eastwood said lightly that Diana was too old for him, as they danced at the White House, she flirted back, "But I'm only 24!" Told during a hospice visit that one woman resident would soon be 100 years old, Diana kidded her: "Some people will do anything to have a party." And their visit was, all in all, a really royal bash.

Dressed in a black suit and black hat, the solemn figure slowly walked the 100 yards from his car to the gravesite. A somber shadow of his former self, Menachem Begin, 72, was at the Mount of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem to attend a memorial service on the third anniversary of the death of his wife Aliza. The former Israeli Prime Minister had not been seen in public since a similar service last year, and some 200 people, including seven Cabinet ministers from his Likud bloc, gathered to pray and pay their respects. After the 15-minute service, Begin answered well-wishers and old friends with only a single vacant repetition of "Shalom." His appearance dispelled rumors that he was bedridden, but it confirmed anew the deep melancholy of the man who has become Israel's most famous recluse.

One might think that for her first film appearance she would have been decked out in tennis togs. But while her moves on the court are second to none, Martina Navratilova, 29, has actually been working longer at her moves on the slopes. She started back home in Czechoslovakia when she was three. "Skiing is my favorite sport next to tennis," she says. Last winter Navratilova agreed to do some schussing down the slopes of Aspen, Colo., for Sports Filmmaker Warren Miller. He had asked her to make a cameo appearance in his new movie, Steep and Deep, which features non-stop stunting by an array of top skiers. The result opened in New York City last week. "I'm in it for about ten seconds," says Navratilova, who enjoyed the change of place but has no further film ambitions for the moment. She passed up the premiere to be in Australia, where she is tuning up for next week's Open. --By Guy D. Garcia