After 27 years and three wars, there wouldn't seem to have been any surprises left for Bob Hope, 64, in his Christmas tours for the troops. So they loaded him into a twin-engined C-2A "Cod" and fired him off the catapult of the carrier Ranger (acceleration from zero to 120 m.p.h. in three seconds), whomping him down on the nearby Coral Sea with the aid of an arresting hook. Hope came away laughing, but just barely. "I haven't felt a hook like that since vaudeville," he told 2,500 gleeful sailors. "I think I lost twelve fillings, and if you see a pair of Jockey shorts buzzing the bridge, they're mine."

There was something familiar about the name. The leader of China's Red Guards? A Paris couturier? Star of the Dracula movies? Perhaps a new submarine? Those glorious guesses were obtained when 2,000 Britons were asked to identify U Thant. Only 58% of the chaps in the street could place U Thant correctly as U.N. Secretary-General. Ah well, he still made out better than Svet-Icma Alliluyeva, who was identified by 51% as Franco's daughter, Khrushchev's daughter, or "the religious bloke with the Beatles."

All in all, it might have been easier if they'd given him a gold watch. But Canada's Liberal Party caucus, at a farewell party for retiring Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, 70, decided that what the P.M. and Wife Maryon, 64, really coveted was a couple of "skidoo outfits"--explorer-like garb suitable for skimming about on snowmobiles. It wasn't half as squirrelly as it sounded, as the Pearsons are avid skidooers. They donned the quilted jump suits on the spot, and Pearson said he intended to stay thus well insulated "from now on until April"--when a party convention will choose his successor.

"I'm not an exhibitionist; I'm not going around baring my bosom to everyone," insisted Actress Joan Collins, 34, after the premiere in Manhattan of Husband Anthony Newley's latest picture, Doctor Dolittle (see CINEMA). She was right, of course: not everyone was at the premiere. But those who were there --plus everyone watching the TV coverage of the event--saw Joan erupting from a Castillo Paris gown that was the dressmaker's equivalent of the Marianas Trench. Far from courting publicity, Joan said, she was just seeking comfort--and "most clothes these days are so rigidly constructed you feel as if you were put together, not dressed."

Even the Beatles had to pay $50 apiece to get in--as John Lennon and George Harrison did to give a leg-up to the annual Paris gala for UNICEF. And even the Beatles had competition from such lens lizards as Marlon Bran do, Fernandel, Victor Borge and Ravi Shankar. The main attraction for the photographers was still Liz and Richard Burton, costumed respectively as a molting ostrich and a grandfatherly hippie. So magnetic were the Burtons that the wife of Prime Minister Georges Pompidou surrendered her seat next to them for a few minutes so that Actress Jeanne Moreau could bask there in the reflected glow. Later, with Liz as cheerleader, Burton got up onstage and rumbled two songs from Camelot--winning less applause than a pop singer named Johnny Holliday, the current hero of tout Paris.

"Jack Dempsey's taking the full count --the winner by a kayo--in the 13th round--Rocky Marciano!" the announcer screamed. Around the nation 380 radio stations carried the epic Dempsey-Marciano fight from ringside --or, more precisely, from the innards of a computer programmed to pick a winner between the two heavyweights, who were champions 30 years apart. The fight was the climax of a 16-man elimination tournament of past champions dreamed up by a Miami radio producer. Among those convinced by the electronic verdict was Marciano, 43, who listened to the broadcast with the 72-year-old Dempsey in a studio in Los Angeles. "He was my idol--I copied everything from him," gushed the Rock. "What the hell," snorted Jack. "It's only a computer."

A house accumulates an awful lot of junk when one family has lived there for eight centuries, particularly if the place is as big as the Count de La Pa-nouse's Chateau de Thoiry at Yvelines, 40 miles from Paris. So it was a long time before anyone looked into a box marked "old clothes." Inside were two handwritten scores, dated 1833, of Frederic Chopin's waltzes in G flat and E flat. The count showed them to Concert Pianist Byron Janis, 39, who in turn showed them to French musical ar chivists. The manuscripts have been pronounced genuine originals as set down by Chopin himself. Janis will record the rediscovered waltzes--slightly different from published versions, with "more charm and subtlety."

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