PERSONAL FILE

. In a state famed for its wheeler-dealers, few have ever outdealt Roy Marie Hofheinz, 49, smooth-talking ex-mayor of Houston, who operates in oil, radio (Corpus Christi), TV (Houston), real estate and sports. Teaming up with Oilman R. E. ("Bob") Smith, Hofheinz recently plunked down $4,940,000 to buy from Hilton Hotels Corp. 494 acres of undeveloped land near downtown Houston. No sooner had they taken title than Hofheinz and Smith gave 29 1/2 of their new acres to the state for a throughway right of way, agreed to sell 180 acres to the county at cost to complete land acquisition for a $15 million sports stadium. The stadium will serve the new Houston National League baseball team, in which Hofheinz and Smith own the controlling interest; the highway should skyrocket the value of their remaining acreage and make far more marketable 177 nearby acres owned by Smith.

. After a successful decade under the military rule of retired General Lucius DuBignon Clay, 64, giant Continental Can Co. will don civvies again. General Clay, newly named as President Kennedy's personal representative to Berlin, turned the chief executive officer's post over to Continental's strapping (6 ft. 3 in.) President Thomas Cyril Fogarty, 57. A whip-smart packaging expert who has been at Continental for 32 years, Fogarty will keep mobilized the battle units that General Clay set up to overcome rival American Can Co.'s sales dominance in the can industry. But aides expect the jovial Fogarty to relax Clay's iron discipline a little.

. When Financier Floyd Odlum, longtime boss of Atlas Corp., retired last year at 68 to his Indio, Calif., ranch, the smart money bet that it would not last. Odlum, the argument ran, was constitutionally incapable of slowing down after 37 years of buying, revitalizing, and selling off such companies as Paramount Pictures, Hilton Hotels, Greyhound Corp., Bonwit Teller and Atlantic Refining. Last week, after 16 months of restless ease, Odlum proved the smart money right, swung back into action as chairman of Salt Lake City's Federal Resources Corp. Federal's assets are a paltry (for Odlum) $6.6 million in beryllium, uranium and silver mines. But Odlum argues that "although the future of this company is over the horizon, the horizon is not too far away."

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