PEOPLE

By Belinda Luscombe

A LITTLE BIT OF A COMEBACK

Having once dipped a toe into the waters of one's own TV show, there's no leaving it. A life of musical theater, race-car driving or doll collecting can sustain one for only so long. Thus it is with DONNY and MARIE OSMOND. Donny (who flirted with car racing) and Marie (who still collects dolls) will return to TV in a daytime talk and variety show in 1998. But can the world's two most famous living Mormons shed their baggage of terminal cuteness? The suits in TV land seem to think so. "They're in their mid-30s. They're parents. They've lived a life just like anybody," says Columbia TriStar Television Distribution president Barry Thurston, who looked at 15 or more celebrities' talk-show ideas before choosing the toothy twosome. "A lot of celebrities want to sing with Donny and Marie."

SWOOPES, THERE SHE IS

Either SHERYL SWOOPES really loves to play basketball or the W.N.B.A. has lousy maternity leave. Six weeks after bringing forth a 7-lb. 9-oz. son, Jordan (named after Michael, natch), the Olympic gold medalist was patrolling the court, and getting past Phoenix Mercury's MIKIKO HAGIWARA for the Houston Comets. "The five minutes I played felt more like 15 or 20," she says, "but I'm amazed at myself. I'm not as far away from where I want to be as I thought." Swoopes, one of the best female players in the game and one of its top earners--she has her own sneaker contract and children's book--was a little hesitant to tell the fledgling W.N.B.A. that she was pregnant, but says it was very supportive. Nevertheless, she waited only two days after the birth to ask her doctor if she could start training. And she wants another child, "eventually--not any time soon." At least not this season.

DID ART IMITATE DEATH?

Novelist PATRICIA CORNWELL always boasts that the secret to her big book sales is research. Perhaps she should have relied more on imagination. A Virginia couple have sued the author, who used to work in the state's chief medical examiner's office, for using private details of their daughter's murder in her 1992 novel All That Remains. Among the alleged similarities: a victim is found with her eyeballs missing and two front teeth beside her. Cornwell's agent had no comment.

SEEN & HEARD

Looks like the Queen of Soul wants more respect for her piano playing. Aretha Franklin has been accepted at the Juilliard School's division of adult studies to study classical piano. Details are not final, but Juilliard has offered to customize a program for her, since she hardly keeps the hours of its regular adult students--mostly doctors, accountants and lawyers. She's not the first celeb musician to seek higher learning there: John Tesh was also a student.

Imagine the discount she's going to get at Harrods now. According to the British papers--and a newly prosperous Italian paparazzo--Princess Diana has a new man. He is Dodi Fayed, a fabulously wealthy playboy-producer type whose father Mohamed al Fayed owns the famous store. The photographer's pictures of the two looking cozy on Fayed's yacht surfaced on the eve of Diana's departure for Bosnia to continue her campaign against land mines.