The true Manhattan snob boasts that he never goes to the pier-fringed West Side except when sailing to Europe. In that spirit, Actress Tallulah Bankhead last week lamented to a New York Timesman that she will soon be forced to journey west to begin rehearsals for her first Broadway appearance since 1957, the title role in Midgie Purvis, a new farce by Mary Chase. Said Tallulah in her Far East town house: "I never leave the East Side. I haven't been to a nightclub in ten years, and the theater bores me--and besides, I haven't got any clothes.'' Skipping blithely to politics, good Democrat Bankhead told of her active campaign plans. Over a spot of "unspiked tomato juice," she drawled: "I hope the Republicans won't hold this against me. Some of my best friends are Republicans. They have all the money, and they're the ones who can afford to buy tickets to my play."

When Harold Macmillan recently moved out, workmen began an extensive renovation of London's No. 10 Downing Street, official residence of Britain's Prime Ministers since 1735. A functionary last week cited a glaring instance of the antiquated state of things: "The Prime Minister had to run the water for his bath longer than the rest of us. That doesn't seem right, does it?"

Jordan's foremost exponent of speed, dashing young King Hussein, 24, will try any means of locomotion once. Last week, on an airfield near his capital of Amman, Hussein--looking a little bit like a young Thomas E. Dewey--climbed into one of the latest species of automobiles, a "go kart," a low-center-of-gravity vehicle that can hit speeds of up to 85 m.p.h. Driving the little racer, which affords drivers an illusion of Grand Prix speeds, brought a grin to Hussein, who normally makes time in road-burning sports cars or jets.

In Hollywood a $400,000 "malicious libel" suit was brought against Hollywood's city fathers by Actor Charles Chaplin Jr. The libel claimed by young Chaplin, son of Swiss-exiled Comedian Charlie Chaplin, is, oddly, not in anything written but in the conspicuous omission of Charlie's name from a stretch of pavement that will be known as the Hollywood "Walk of Fame," bearing the inscribed names of some 1,500 Hollywood stars, past and present. Chaplin Jr. sees his father's failure to get star billing in cement as tantamount to public disgrace. At the very least, it is ingratitude.

Through two previous deferments. Paris' willowy Couturier Yves Saint-Laurent, 24, boy wonder of the House of Dior, has avoided a 27-month draftee hitch in the French army. The deferments made sense of a sort: Saint-Laurent, a frail fellow, is a key figure in France's fashion industry. But last week the army rejected his third request to stay bivouacked in his salon. On Sept. 1 he will report for his physical examination, presumably soon thereafter be dreaming of furloughs instead of furbelows.

Listening attentively for the peal of wedding bells, newsmen in Monaco kept their gaze focused on Greek Shipping King Aristotle Socrates Onassis, recently divorced by his wife Tina, and his great and dear songbird, Soprano Maria Callas, legally separated from her Italian industrialist husband. The two were together in a gilded cage, the Monte Carlo Casino, at a Red Cross charity affair presided over by Prince Rainier III and Princess Grace (who is fonder of Maria than she was of Tina). After the ball, Maria flew off to Athens for three evenings of singing. After a stop in a chic Monaco jewelry emporium, Onassis followed her. Will they marry? Maria won't talk, and Onassis is almost as uninformative, in a guileful way: he tells reporters to say anything they wish about Maria and him.

"We've done this stunt often enough," grumped Herbert Hoover upon meeting newsmen in his suite in Manhattan's Waldorf Towers. But the reporters insisted that he should say something on the eve of his 86th birthday, so Grand Old Republican Hoover slyly drew out a prepared statement that he read in 16 minutes, then parried with his interrogators. Who's he going to vote for in November? "The party that honored me with the presidency. I have no doubt that also applies to my friend, former President Truman." Will religion loom large as a campaign issue? Rumbled the Quaker who defeated Roman Catholic Alfred E. Smith in the 1928 presidential race: "It's a dreadful idea. I abhor bigotry. I denounced it half a dozen times in the 1928 campaign and thousands of other times." His reaction to Nikita Khrushchev's boast that in two more generations the U.S. will live under Communism: "That ain't so! Our republic is not in its decline and fall."

Less than a fortnight after his model butler, Thomas Cronin, exited in exasperation from the semi-royal household, Britain's Antony Armstrong-Jones suffered another loss. The latest departure: Tony's gentleman's gentleman, Footman-Valet Bernard McBride, who resigned, according to one rumor, because Princess Margaret's husband is sometimes so indifferent to his wardrobe that he scarcely needs a coat hanger, much less a valet.

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