Ask 22 different celebrities for ideas on how to decorate a Christmas tree, and what do they send? Twenty-two different personal plugs, that's what. Hallmark thought up the gimmick for a seasonal display at its Manhattan Gallery, decorating the trees according to suggestion. Jeweler Harry Winston fancied diamond sparkles, Rex Harrison (Dr. Dolittle) spoke up for animal heads, Cartoonist Charles Schulz wanted a pine branch atop Snoopy's doghouse, Julia Child recommended pots and pans on a stainless-steel tree, and Leontyne Price wanted her tree covered in opera programs. Pop Sculptor Marisol,-37, was one of the few who eschewed a personal trademark, imagining a tree lying on its side in bed dreaming of its fellow trees in the forest. Hallmark set one up just that way, and--well, it looked like a Marisol trademark anyway.

No one has ever got around to starring Katharine Hepburn, 60, in a musical--possibly for the same reason that no composer has yet written a concerto for duck call. Now the oversight is to be remedied in sensational fashion. Kate has been signed for the title role in next season's Coco, an oversized Broadway musical about Couturiere Coco Chanel that will have a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, music by Andre Previn, and a tab of $500,000. The musical, gestating since 1959, was supposed to star Rosalind Russell, but she got entangled in movie commitments.

Dressed tip-to-toe in clinging net, she looks more or less like a stand-up hammock. But the bizarre is what the fans came to see in Donyale Luna, 21, the Detroit-born spindle (5 ft. 10 in., 114

Ibs.) who was Europe's hottest model and cover girl last year. Donyale is now getting a shot at the movies in an Italian opus called Stop the World I Want To Get Off (no kin to the London-Broadway musical). By way of burnishing the image, Donyale told the Italian press that she keeps her figure (31-21-36) by eating only a kilo of meat per day--which comes to 2.2 Ibs., enough to sate a good-sized mastiff.

The latest De Gaulle joke in Washington imagines Charles de Gaulle on a visit to the Louvre with Minister of Culture Andre Malraux. "Ah," says le grand Charles, "a Matisse." "Non, mon general, that's a Monet." They move on. "Aha! A Cezanne." "Non, mon general --a Utrillo." A few minutes later, De Gaulle cries: "You can't fool me this time. That is a Picasso." 'Won, mon general," says Malraux sadly. "That is a mirror."

Six-feet one-inch tall and 230 Ibs. wide, and there he was, blubbering like an onion peeler right out where everybody could see him. Pro football really can make strong men cry, and Washington Redskins Linebacker Sam Huff's turn came as he announced his retirement after a brutal twelve-year career, during which he made All-Pro five times. Now 33, Defenseman Huff (TIME Cover, Nov. 30, 1959) went from West Virginia to eight years of stardom with the New York Giants, playing on five championship teams, before he was traded to Washington four years ago. "Everyone has to do it some time and it's my time now," Sam sniffed, but he couldn't help leaving the door unlatched. "If they needed me, really needed me, to help clinch a title," Huff said, "I couldn't refuse."

Perhaps it was too much to expect that Montrealers could have respected his request for a quiet, unpublicized departure. More than 6,500 letters had arrived bidding him Godspeed, and now TV crews, newsmen and 750 well-wishers thronged Montreal's International Airport to say farewell to Paul-Emile Cardinal Leger, 63, as he left his archdiocese for self-imposed missionary work in an African leper colony. "When I first made my decision, I felt all alone, but in a month it has become apparent that I have obeyed God's will," said the cardinal. "I leave with a resolution never to come back. I tell you to love God; love one another."

A tender moment it no doubt was, but it still looked an awful lot like a corporate merger. Flanked by His-and-Hers lawyers, Playboy Huntington Hartford, 56, and Third Wife Diane, 25, announced that they have reconciled after a four-month international joust that included a well-publicized dalliance between Diane and Singer Bobby Darin. The bill for the resumed cooing came high, but Hartford gamely anted up a $1,500,000 trust fund for Diane's unborn child, expected in June.

Fluttering north from Saigon in a privately chartered helicopter to inspect a Viet Nam resettlement camp, Illinois G.O.P. Senator Charles Percy, 48, decided on impulse to take a look at Dak Son, the Montagnard village recently destroyed by the Viet Cong in the war's worst atrocity. The Senator and a party of four hopped to the ground in Dak Son, leaving Loraine Percy in the chopper, and were met by a welcoming barrage of mortar and small-arms fire from surrounding V.C.s. "I can assure you I have never gotten closer to the ground," said Percy, who was pinned down for 15 minutes until four U.S. Army copters whirred in to bail him out. "I saw more action there than I did in three years in World War II."

Who did the sculpture of Bob Hope for this week's TIME cover.

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