The black pajamas she was wearing were not as chic as the haute couture dresses she had modeled in Paris. Still, Michele Ray, 28, now a French magazine correspondent in Viet Nam, looked fetching in the outfit tailored for her by her Viet Cong captors. Last week, after spending 21 days with the V.C., Michele strolled into a government-held village. Well, what had it been like? Oh, not bad, said Michele. As a matter of fact, she made it sound cozy. The Cong had treated her "more like a guest than a captive," playing gin rummy with her during quiet moments, and tucking her into a dugout when U.S. planes clobbered nearby guerrilla positions. And that was all she would tell the boys in Saigon until she writes up her scoop in a Life article.

What God hath joined together falls apart so often that Anthropologist Margaret Mead, 65, has long believed that the U.S. could do with two different forms of marriage. One, she explained at a San Francisco State College symposium, would be the "individual marriage." With the aid and comfort of the Pill, young people could live together without having children and easily dissolve the union if one or the other got bored with it. On the other hand, in the "parental marriage," which would be much more difficult to obtain, the couple would be allowed to rear children, relieving the strains of parenthood by an occasional adultery.

He supports U.S. policy on Viet Nam, but Frank Sinatra, 51, has been getting heavy flak on the subject from his showbiz friends. Finally, he got together with an aide to Vice President Hubert Humphrey, asking for counsel on how to answer the doves' arguments. Well, said the aide William Connell, you submit their critical questions to us, and we will try to reply. Hearing that, Frankie appointed himself a sort of U.S. Ambassador to Hollywood, solemnly dispatched communiques to all his pals suggesting that as the Administration's representative, he was prepared to pass on their opinions and deliver policy briefings. Said Ambassador Sinatra: "I'm doing this as a favor to the Vice President."

She still felt shaky and Producer Carlo Ponti, 53, tenderly guided his wife, Actress Sophia Loren, 32, through the crowd at Rome's Fiumicino Airport. Her doctors had prescribed complete rest following her miscarriage last month, and so, with Carlo, Sophia flew off to the quiet of their chalet in BUergenstock, Switzerland, where she will remain until the end of the month.

Then, moving up to their Paris apartment, Sophia will start work on a film whose script she already knows by heart. It's a documentary entitled The Life of Sophia Loren.

Gym Director Herbert Botts spluttered: "This is for members of Congress only." Replied Hawaii's Patsy Mink, 39: "Well, we're members of Congress." Indeed they were. And Patsy, along with Washington's Catherine May, 52, and Illinois' Charlotte Reid, 53, figured it was about time the eleven ladies in the U.S. House of Representatives started enjoying some of the boys' privileges--such as the use of the House gym and swimming pool. The three gals marched into the director's office to sign up for a new calisthenics class, quickly had Botts "turning red, blue and pink," according to Catherine, as he tried to explain that sometimes the gentlemen wander around the locker room naked.

Well, then, how about some extra swimming time for the ladies, who were previously assigned the pool at inconvenient morning hours? The barrier fell.

Hereafter, on Monday afternoons, the men will be locked out so that their girl colleagues can stay in shape too.

No one can say how many millions Pennsylvania Heiress Helen Clay Frick, 75, daughter of Steel Baron Henry Clay Frick, has poured into the University of Pittsburgh. She established the Pitt Art Department in 1927, later gave the school a blank check to stock her Henry Clay Frick Fine Arts Library. Seven years ago, she donated a splendid Frick Fine Arts Museum. As always, she demanded secrecy about the overall cost of the building and its collection, but this time she also demanded control over the building's operation and personnel. At last, her aversion to modern art and her criticism of the staff became too much for Pitt, which sadly severed ties with its great benefactor. Pitt will keep her previous gifts, but she will no longer have a voice at the university. "Academic integrity is the issue," said Vice Chancellor Charles Peake. "I'm sorry my collection was not appreciated," said Miss Frick.

Abandoning his normal theater of operations in Hollywood, Director John Ford, 72, took an old costume out of mothballs--the dress blues identifying him as a rear admiral, U.S. Naval Reserve. A genuine salt with combat service during World War II and the Korean War, Ford arranged to put out with the fleet on three weeks' temporary active duty. Flying to Marseille, he caught up with the cruiser U.S.S. Columbus, joined the staff of an old war buddy, Rear Admiral John Bulkeley, who commands a Sixth Fleet flotilla. Admiral Ford posed on the bridge like Captain Bligh, then settled down to his duty for the Mediterranean exercises: conducting a shipboard seminar on filmmaking.

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