PEOPLE

By NADYA LABI; BELINDA LUSCOMBE

GUMBEL GAMBLES ON CBS

Position sought: attractive, well-dressed news anchor, quick on his feet, efficient, not too warm and fuzzy. Prefers not to work with loud weathermen, late-night talk show hosts or Deborah Norville. Remuneration: estimated at about $5 million a year. After two months of golf, deliberation and negotiations with the three big networks, BRYANT GUMBEL has found a new place to hang his fedora: cbs. He will be host of a prime-time weekly newsmagazine show and has formed a company with the network to produce other programs. "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't somewhat sad about leaving a place that was my home for a quarter-century," says Gumbel, who wept on his last day on the air at nbc (which was reportedly paying him a salary until his announcement last week). "But this is my new home." Be it ever so Gumbel.

NIRMALA'S A NUN-PAREIL

Saints don't often retire. But MOTHER TERESA, the woman whom many revere as one, is 86. So, it has fallen on the frail-looking shoulders of SISTER NIRMALA, 70, a high-caste Hindu convert to Catholicism, to take over the Missionaries of Charity. Sister Nirmala joined the order at 23, after witnessing the horrors of the partition of India and Pakistan. "It was inspiration at first sight," she says of Mother Teresa's work. "Here was someone who could bring some compassion and a sense of destiny to the people." Sister Nirmala was elected by 123 sisters who had been praying and meditating for two months. Her ascendancy was something of a surprise. And it's hardly a position one campaigns for. But she seems to have the requisite humility. "I'm not Mother Teresa. I'm Sister Nirmala," she told journalists. "Please don't call me Mother."

HAIR SCARE

The problem with pret-a-porter collections is that unlike couture, the clothes are supposed to be worn by people other than the preternaturally skeletal and rich. This isn't as much fun for the designers. Perhaps that's why in Paris last week, fashion's famous let their wilder ideas go to models' heads. At Christian Dior, Oriental wigs covered up the famous tresses of the likes of CINDY CRAWFORD (far left). Givenchy stylists put others in hedge-like mop tops. Issey Miyake seemed to be aiming for the postmodern haystack, while KATE MOSS'S wedge (second from left) almost distracted from Chanel's most unbusinesslike bikini-and-woolen-suit ensemble.

THOSE REUNION BLUES

Is there an event that inspires more mixed feelings than the 10-year high school reunion? The traditional get-togethers and their attendant anxieties propel the plots of at least three upcoming movies. Why do these rituals both attract and repel us? "It's curious to see how people turned out," says JOAN CUSACK, who stars in Grosse Pointe Blank, a dark comedy about a hit man at his reunion. "At mine, I was able to talk to the guy I had a crush on, finally." Her brother JOHN CUSACK, who co-wrote and stars in the movie, had planned to skip his but made a deal with his friends that they would "embrace the horror" if the movie got made. "Much to our dismay, the film was fully financed, so we had to go," says John. "You saw what 10 years had done to people. It was beautiful or it was horrible or it was sad or it was miraculous." MIRA SORVINO, who missed her reunion because she was working, confesses that it was a relief to have an excuse. "I hated high school," she says. She tapped into the anxieties she felt at Dwight-Englewood School in New Jersey to play Romy in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (with LISA KUDROW and JANEANE GAROFALO), the story of friends who try to fool their ex-classmates. DAVID SCHWIMMER, who made his directorial debut with Since You've Been Gone, can't have enjoyed his reunion (or movie) much. He didn't even want to talk about it.

TO VICTOR, NO SPOILS

The death of an author can leave behind all sorts of sticky issues, including, these days, questions about sequels, movie rights and, naturally, McDonald's tie-ins. VICTOR HUGO, for example, who died in 1885, lost the copyrights to his novels long ago. But his descendants are out of joint at Disney for making what they call a "scandalous and obscene" production out of Hugo's 1831 classic, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. In an open letter to the French daily Liberation, five of the scribe's great-great-grandchildren--Charles, Adele, Jeanne, Sophie and Leopoldine--lambaste Disney for the adaptation, which, by the way, more than 6 million of their countrymen have flocked to see. "Should not the cultural authorities of our country react against this commercial pillage of heritage?" the quintet demand. What's worse, they add, Disney didn't even put Grandpere's name on the posters. Apparently, naming two of the singing gargoyles Victor and Hugo wasn't homage enough.

DOCTOR, STEEL THYSELF

If you're looking for a sympathetic ear, don't tune your dial to Dr. Laura's radio talk show. Since LAURA SCHLESSINGER started dishing out her caustic brand of therapy nationally in 1994 (tough love is for sissies), more than a few wretched callers have forgotten--at their peril--that sniveling is strictly verboten, along with abortion and premarital sex. Unless, apparently, you're the host. Last week America's favorite antishrink broke down on air. What could possibly have induced such a "spiritual crisis," as she called it, for the author of Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives? A bad review, from Dallas Morning News's Maryln Schwartz, who chastised her for being disagreeable at a Jewish conference, including turning down multiple hotel suites and taxis because of the "smell." Dr. Laura, How Could You Do That?! (HarperCollins; $12) But she had a cure: giving her appearance fee to charity rid her of "much of the pain and ugliness."