Subpoenaed to testify in a murder trial. Writer Truman Capote played hard to get and got himself slapped with a $500 fine and a three-day jail sentence for what the judge called "plain old contempt." Capote wheeled up to do his time in a black Mercedes, a blue suit and shades. "I've been in 30 or 40 jails and prisons," boasted the author of In Cold Blood, "but this is the first time I'll ever be in one as a prisoner." Eighteen hours later he was sprung, after his doctor expressed "apprehension" about Truman's health.

. . .

Old England swings along--at least for the over-40s. Where else would Claudette Colbert, 63, open up with such a generous smile? She was on hand to attend a London auction and make U.S. watchers of the late show feel nostalgic. Where else would Veronica Lake, 50, decide to spend the rest of her days with both eyes showing, serving tea to friends? Her famed, blonde "peekaboo" hair now wavy rather than flowing, thrice-married Miss Lake is settling in Suffolk. Marriage? "I don't have any special man friend--although I do enjoy an Englishman's company and wit."

. . .

Britain's Prince Philip was in Italy in his role as vice president of the World Wildlife Fund ("After all, if there were no wild animals, there would be nothing to hunt"). There was, in fact, nothing to hunt at Abruzzi National Park, but later, when a BBC reporter asked him the color of the rare Abruzzi bears, Philip became unaccountably testy: "That's just the sort of silly bloody question the representative of a mammoth organization like the BBC would ask." Then to the interpreter: "Don't translate that." The way the Italian press got it, the Duke politely answered. "Brown."

. . .

Does it desecrate the American flag to sit on it? Not, presumably, when the sitter is Raquel Welch. Haled into a Philadelphia court for having a picnic on a flag, five young men defended themselves with a photo of Raquel's noteworthy anatomy cradled in the stars and snuggled in the stripes. Municipal Judge Robert A. Latrone was impressed. "Do we condone that and prosecute these defendants?" he asked. "When she cloaks herself in the flag, is she glamorizing the flag or desecrating it?" Case dismissed.

. . .

A flutter of fingers, a kiss-kiss of lips, a toss-up of locks--it was Tiny Tim in Yorkshire at the start of a five-week tour of England. But Tim's manner seemed so inappropriate to his matter (The Land of Hope and Glory, the superpatriotic hymn to Britain from Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance) that onetime Coldstream Guardsman Jim Smith, 34, felt impelled to wrest the mike away. "This man was running down England," barked the unrepentant Guardsman. "I'm quitting," trilled the unrepentant singer, who thereupon flounced back to the States.

. . .

"We never even wanted to be Vice President and now, dear God, it's come to this," said Lady Bird Johnson to Jacqueline Kennedy aboard the plane carrying J.F.K.'s body back to Washington. There were other excerpts from Lady Bird's forthcoming book, A White House Diary. L.B.J., a month after ordering the bombing of North Viet Nam: "I can't get out. I can't finish it with what I've got. So what the hell can I do?" Lady Bird, on Daughter Luci's dress for her baptism into the Roman Catholic Church: "About as inconspicuous as Brigitte Bardot." On Lynda Bird's boy friend, Actor George Hamilton: "Part of the wine of life, exciting and heady." On the surprises in L.B.J.'s bedroom: "I walked in this morning for coffee, and who should be sitting there but Richard Nixon." L.B.J., musing about Vice President Hubert Humphrey: "If I could just breed him to Calvin Coolidge . . ."

. . .

Trumpeted as THE 75 MOST IMPORTANT WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES, and set to run in the January Ladies' Home Journal, the list is more interesting for its omissions than its inclusions. Among the latter: Rose Mary Woods, President Nixon's longtime secretary. Among the former: Ethel Kennedy, who has been on the Gallup list of the Ten Most Admired Women in the World for two years running.

. . .

If Critic-"Conceiver" Kenneth Tynan (Oh! Calcutta!), Entrepreneur Hugh Hefner (Playboy), and Director Roman Polanski (Knife in the Water) collaborate to make a movie, what will its title be? Macbeth! Shooting is scheduled to start in northern Wales next week with a script by Polanski, Tynan and Shakespeare, and a cast of unknowns, young enough to make the Weird Sisters not too unattractive with their clothes off.

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