A growing favorite in Pravda, official handicap sheet of the Soviet Communist hierarchy: mop-haired Mikhail A. Suslov, 58, party braintruster and veteran member of the Presidium. Three times last week Pravda quoted lengthily from "important" Suslov speeches. Unsurprising contents of all three: fawning eulogies of steady booster Nikita Khrushchev. . . . Wealthy Pasta King Giovanni Buitoni's money is in his tummy, but his heart is really in his throat. The 68-year-old macaroni maker is going into opera, he says, to "fulfill one of my fondest dreams," will sing the basso profundo role of Don Basilic in a charity performance of The Barber of Seville with a Manhattan opera company early next year. Signora Buitoni. an ex-coloratura soprano who knows all about Giovanni's booming arias, will attend his operatic debut. "After that," quipped Buitoni. "she will probably fly to Europe to avoid the noise." . . . Winging into Paris' Orly Airport, Boston Matron Rose Kennedy, 70. was forthwith thrust into a quarter-hour TV interview, proved as nimble as Son Jack in verbal fencing--although one listener described her French as "not so fractured as it sounded fried in bacon grease." A partial translation of the session: Q.: And your son, Madame, does he know well the problems of our country? A.: Admirably. Q.: Consequently, if some day he enters the White House, we will have a friend in him? A.: Why are you using "if?" Q.: What are his essential qualities? A.: Courage, hard work, culture, love of a job well done, a willing and reflective character. Q.: Does he have any faults? A.: Potted too (Pas du tout, or "Not at all"). Q. (edged with Gallic suspicion): That's too good to be true? A. (in most sagacious tones): You don't want me--his mother and best election agent--to unveil the weaknesses of my John? . . . Like the scholiasts of old, two U.S. intellectuals sternly debated the question of whether Cinemactress Kim Novak can dance on the head of a pin. Reviewing her latest movie, Strangers When We Meet, Critic Stanley Kauffmann announced in the New Republic that Kim's diction struck him as an "unvaried strangulated hush." Charging to her defense, gallant young Author John Updike first of all pointed out in a letter to the editors that "she is a terrific-looking woman." Lectured Updike: "To criticize Miss Novak because her tone of voice is always the same is as absurd as criticizing a Byzantine ikon because it is static and badly drawn." Sniffed Kauffmann, in what tellectuals" undoubtedly is like not the Updike, "a last film word: to theater "in is a kind of steam bath or opium den to which one goes for a faintly wicked and figuratively supine little debauch . . . Pre sumably Miss Novak as Medea would raise him to the heights of Kimiolatry." . . . In her modest home by a Southern California orange grove, Hannah Nixon, 75, widowed mother of the Vice Presi dent, was chatting about her famous son. The first thing she made clear about Richard Milhous Nixon : "I never called him Dick. He just seems like a Richard to me."-- Turning back to Nixon's childhood, she recalled: "When he was a boy, he looked up to Mr. Everett Burnham. a train engineer. I don't know if Richard had any goals early in life." Despite Nixon's preoccupation now with the nation's loftiest goal, his mother is positive that "he still reads the sport pages first thing in the morning." His public career has given her several bad turns, especially when the Vice President got embroiled in his celebrated "kitchen debate" with Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow last year: "My, that Khrushchev was so fierce! Looking at the newspaper pictures, I thought he was going to poke Richard in the nose. But Richard never flinched." How does she feel when Nixon's political foes take potshots at him? Looking ahead to the forthcoming presidential campaign, she testily said: "Certainly they aren't going to come up with something new in the way of digs! I think Richard will get the nomination, but the election--It's going to be very, very tough." . . . So great is the affection of Manager Cus D'Amato for his fighter, World Heavyweight Champion Floyd Patterson, that D'Amato outdid his customary generosity in giving Patterson a little something befitting the man's rank. At a testimonial banquet in Manhattan, Boxer Patterson, who regained his title in June from Sweden's Ingemar Johansson and plans to defend it in Los Angeles Nov. i, starred in a coronation ceremony witnessed by such fight fans as U.S. Attorney General William P. Rogers, New York City's Mayor Robert Wagner and Grand Old Democrat James A. Farley. His gift, symbolizing good behavior and pugilistic excellence: a jazzy gold crown peppered with diamonds, rubies and sapphires. Value, by D'Amato's estimate: $35,000. . . . Of all the U.S. ladies least likely to seem a homebody, Oldtime Stripper Gypsy Rose Lee is the sure choice to take the cake that she herself never baked. But last week it turned out that Gypsy wasn't just cooking with gas--she was making, of all things, clothes. Reporting a survey indicating that 37 million U.S. women make an average of 20 garments a year per family. McCall's Patterns noted that one of its foremost pattern purchasers is Gypsy, turned do-it-yourself seamstress, possibly as penance for all those years of professional disdain. . . . In Vogue as the ninth in the magazine's series of "fashion personalities": pool-eyed Princess Radziwill, 27, third wife of a Polish nobleman turned London businessman. The Princess, married once before, is the former Lee Bouvier, and like her equally attractive sister, Jackie Bouvier Kennedy, is now expecting her second child. Rhapsodized Vogue: "Her clothes-life starts with one enchanting, instantly-visible asset: her beauty -- dark-haired, with widely spaced dark-brown eyes and a serene, oval face . . . She seldom wears hats, but when she does she likes them large-brimmed and fem inine, though never fussy. If she has a fashion-signature, it is simplicity." . . . Reminding televiewers that the last echo of rigged TV quiz shows has not yet died away, a Manhattan grand jury called in onetime Quizling Elfrida von Nardroff, 34, winner of $220,500 on NBC's extinct, discredited Twenty One program, to tell what, if anything, she knew about sure-fire answers. As she left the hearing. Elfrida was asked by a pack of local newshounds what had happened at the session. Replied ex-Answer Girl Nardroff: ''I'm sorry; I can't tell you anything." Pleaded one reporter: "Elfrida, this is our business -- to ask questions." "Yes," good-byed Elfrida behind her dark glasses, "but this is my life."

-- A fond sort of mother's reverse intimacy, UPI shared by Rose Kennedy (sec above) but not by U.S. voters, who know their favorites as Dick and Jack.

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