CBS-TV brass sat down and privately took in a video-taped Person to Person interview with aging (66, maybe) Sex Goddess Mae West, promptly canceled the earthy program because parts of it "might be misconstrued." Had Author West (Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It) said or done anything naughty before the cameras? "Certain minds always misconstrue everything," said the past mistress of double-meaning ribaldry. "I have a very big public that understands what I say." Exactly what happened when CBS Interviewer Charles Collingwood came up and saw Mae in her Hollywood apartment? One of the droller exchanges came when he commented on all the mirrors in Mae's plushy bedroom. "They're for personal observation," said Mae, deadpan. "I always like to know how I'm doing." Sensing that the going was getting a bit hot, Collingwood suggested that they switch the subject to foreign affairs. Said Mae: "I've always had a weakness for foreign affairs."

Back home in Michigan, Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield put a cancellation stamp on rumors that he might run for office next year. "Look, I'm now 60!" cried he. "I've worked hard since I was 13 years old with hardly anything resembling a vacation. If I ran for anything, my wife would crown me!"

Standing beside an F-105 jet fighter-bomber and ready for takeoff, it could have been the ghost of the old Flying Tiger himself, General Claire L Chennault, who died last year. There was good reason for the startling resemblance. The craggy-faced general's craggy-faced son, Air Force Major Claire P. Chennault, 38, is 17-year veteran of the service, has two brothers, Colonel John and Master

Sergeant Charles Chennault, as comrades in arms. He is assistant operations officer of a squadron in Florida.

The only organization in Britain that might be expected to slap a fine on Queen Elizabeth II did just that. The autocratic Jockey Club notified defaulting Member Elizabeth that she would have to pay up $140 for failing to notify the club at least three days before the running of the Champion Stakes at Newmarket that her colt, Above Suspicion, would not be in the race.

Attending a golden anniversary meeting of Old Settlers in the booming city of Tempe, Ariz. (pop. 16,900), Arizona's long-settled Democratic Senator Carl Hayden, 82, born in an Arizona hamlet once known as Hay den's Ferry (so dubbed after his father and now called Tempe), gave the youngsters in their '50s and his contemporaries some earthy advice: "Believe me, I don't take my work to bed with me. I always figured you couldn't solve any problems between the sheets!"

Ireland's tosspot Playwright-Autobiog-rapher Brendan Behan, a portly 36, tippy-toed back into London, whose citizens he treated last July to the spectacle of one of the most monumental binges of modern times. Proudly proclaimed Wife Beatrice, who did not accompany Behan on his summer pub safari: "He's been off the gargle for a week or two. He's been very good." In a Piccadilly bar, Behan hoisted just one wee nip and bellowed: "To success!" Clinking glasses with him, Beatrice responded: "Success to abstinence!" Then Behan lumbered off to the theater to catch a performance ..of his London hit, The Hostage. At play's end, to cries of "Author!" he took the stage, smiled with clear-eyed modesty, drew a big hand by saying: "I'm absolutely sober."

"I was so thrilled I didn't really know what I was buying!" exclaimed a fluttery shopper after leaving a dress shop in Topeka, Kans. She had just been waited on by the newest of the store's dozen saleswomen: temporarily retired Cinemactress Gene Tierney, 38, off and on for several years a voluntary patient in private mental hospitals. Now an outpatient in Topeka's famed Menninger Clinic, where she spent eight months last year' Gene would not discuss her courageous venture in occupational therapy. But her boss allowed: "She's doing a beautiful job. And she certainly knows clothes."

The new Miss America, Mississippi's custom-made (36-24-36) Lynda Lee Mead, 20, got a roaring welcome-home parade in her home town of Natchez (pop. 29,200) from some 50,000 curbsiders. In Jackson, state legislators, elated over Mississippi misses copping the Miss America crown two years in a row, passed a resolution commending Lynda Lee, authorized issuance of special, optional license plates for cars' front bumpers (price: $1). The legend: "Mississippi, Home of Miss Americas, Land of Beautiful Women."

Some pungent excerpts from the forthcoming Triumph in the West, Volume II of the war diaries of Field Marshal Lord Alanbroolce, Chief of Britain's Imperial General Staff during World War II, were published in Canada by Maclean's Magazine. Items:

Of Field Marshal Lord Montgomery (1944): "I had to tell him off and ask him not to meddle himself in everybody else's affairs ... As usual he took it well." Of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (1943): "A cross between a pine-martin and a ferret . . . with no grasp of war in its larger aspects, but determined to get the best of all bargains." Of Madame Chiang (1943): "Sex and politics seem to predominate, both being used to achieve her ends . . . The more I see of her, the less I like her." Of Sir Winston Churchill (afterthought): "Winston's lack of 'width' and 'depth' in the examination of problems was a factor I never got over. He would select individual pieces of the vast jigsaw puzzle ... and concentrate on them at the expense of all others." Of Dwight D. Eisenhower (1944): "Absolutely no strategical outlook. He makes up, however, by the way he works for good cooperation between allies." Of General Douglas MacArthur (afterthought): "A very striking personality, with perhaps a tinge of the actor . . .' The greatest general and best strategist that the war produced." Of Harry S Truman at Potsdam (1945); "On the whole, I liked him ... A quick brain, a feeling of honesty, a good businessman and a pleasant personality. Last night in one of his quick remarks Stalin had said about him, 'Honesty adorns the man,' and he was not far wrong."

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