The christening would have made news in any event; the baby was the granddaughter of Benito Mussolini. But it was Gorgeous Godmother Sophia Loren who brought the wrath of L'Osservatore Romano down on everyone's heads. Sophia was asked by her sister Maria, wife of Pianist Romano Mussolini, to be godmother to two-week-old Alessandra. Unfortunately, Sophia's spiritual adviser, Jesuit Father Virginio Rotondi, neglected to tell her that in so doing she would be violating Article 2357 of canon law. So long as Italian and church law block Producer Carlo Ponti's divorce from his present wife--and his marriage to Sophia--she is living in "public concubinage" in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church, and is thereby unfit for godmotherhood. Sighed Sophia: "It was one of the happiest events of my life. In any case. I am the child's godmother and proud of it.''

It was house-hunting time in Chevy Chase, and the property that caught the eye of the prospects was Bonnie Brae, the estate of Washington Department Store Heir Nathaniel H. Luttrell Jr. After negotiations are completed for the landscaped grounds and 17-room fieldstone and brick house, the new neighbor at 6036 Oregon Avenue, N.W., wall probably be Anatoly F. Dobrynin, 42, Soviet Ambassador to the U.S. Reported price for the new embassy: $550,000.

Landmarks are toppling like dominoes, and the latest to get a foretaste of doom is Montmartre's Moulin Rouge, soon to make way for a supermarket unless sentimental Parisians can block its sale. Built in 1889 as a dance hall for Paris' deliciously depraved demimonde, it subsequently became a cabaret, vaudeville house, cinema, and a focal point for "generations" of wide-eyed tourists. Its raffish denizens were immortalized by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, the unhappy dwarf who turned poster drawing into a fine art.

Louisiana's Composer-Governor Jimmie (You Are My Sunshine) Davis, 60, and his wife Alvern moved into the costliest governor's mansion in the U.S. Davis was feeling kind of sheepish for having pushed completion of the $1,000,000 "Taj Mahal of the bayous" at a time when he had a record $73 million deficit, insisted that all this Greek Revival splendor is just not for him: "So far as I'm concerned, all I need is my bedroom with a rocking chair, a flashlight and coon dog." As for pictures, said Davis, "the only ones I'd want would be a picture of my mother and father and a picture of the Bach Springs leap frog team, and go with that."

Said Burton's adhesive wife Sybil: There's really no reason to quibble. No matter what Liz says, perforce, I'm not giving Dick a divorce, And the news that I am is pure fribble.

Scarcely had Britain's ban-the-bomb Committee of One Hundred been reduced to 99 than it slipped another notch to 98. First Bertrand Russell, 90, turtlenecked civil insurgent, resigned as president on the grounds that he had other things to do--things like writing a book about the peacemaker's role he believes he played in the Cuban and Sino-Indian crises, and keeping up his pen-palship with Khrushchev, Chou En-lai and Castro. Then Actress Vanessa Redgrave, 25, sidewalk-sitting daughter of Sir Michael Redgrave, resigned by mail. A Committee of One Hundred spokesman refused to talk about Vanessa's reason for bombing the bans: "I cannot say anything more than that it was a short letter."

"It's such a wonderful friendship that it would be a shame to spoil it with marriage," quoth Actress Joan Fontaine, 45, who has lost three former friends that way: Husbands Brian Aherne, William Dozier and Collier Young. Joan pooh-poohed stories that she was about to marry Cartoonist Charles Addams, 51, the Van Gogh of the ghouls. "Marriage is for people who want babies or to live in villages; since we want neither, we're not interested."

Flicking the ash off his filter-tipped American cigarette, Soviet Poet Evgeny Evtushenko, 29, pondered the questions of West German newsmen on a visit to the free side of the Iron Curtain with his wife Galya, who has been translating Salinger into Russian. Spiffily decked out in the latest Russo-Italian style--bobtailed blue suit, pointy shoes, argyle socks and a seal-fur bow tie--the symbol of flaming Soviet youth and the "generation of the thaw," denied that "thaw" is the proper word. "I think the process is actually more like spring, sort of early spring with some cold winds and even occasional frost in between. But, like spring in nature, an inevitable process that needs time."

Q. Do you bet on ball games?

A. I have bet on ball games.

Q. Have you ever bet on a ball game in which you were playing?

A. Yes, I have.

A genial, 245-lb. defensive tackle for the Detroit Lions, Alex Karras, 27, was worried about those rumors that pro football players had been "shaving points" and associating with hoodlums. Alex decided to clear the air, and, fortified with indiscretion, taped a TV interview for NBC. He was sure that no pro football player would ever try to fix a game. But, personally, he enjoyed a little wager now and then. Doesn't everybody? Then N.F.L. Commissioner Pete Rozelle pointed out that all player contracts specifically forbid betting on league games. Facing a possible suspension, Karras sobbed that it was all a dreadful mistake. "I've never bet more than a pack of cigarettes or a couple of cigars," he said. A lie-detector test? Sure. "If I lied, the way I'm built, the lie-detector machine would explode."

Ill lay: T. S. Eliot, 76, suffering from a bronchial attack brought on by London's recent heavy smog; Mamie Eisenhower, 66, with a touch of the flu, in Palm Desert, Calif., where she and Ike are spending the winter; Harry Truman, 78, "doing nicely" after an operation for hernia, in Kansas City's Research Hospital.

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