Was Howard Hughes fun on a date?

Yes, choruses an octet of actresses in this month's Ladies' Home Journal, but he had his quirks. "Howard usually drove a one-year-old Chevrolet," recalls Mitzi Gaynor. "He had hundreds of them, he said, 'because they give good service, and nobody stares into a year-old Chevrolet like they do into limousines.' " Loretta Young says Hughes once phoned her, announced that he was taking her to a play that night. "I told him I already had a date. He said, 'Fine, I'll buy three tickets.' My poor date didn't have a chance." Hughes once flew Ida Lupino to view his yacht; she found it draped in canvas. Says Ida: "I asked, 'Do you ever use this boat?' And he said 'Nope.' Then I asked if it just stood there with a full crew ready all the time. And he said 'Yep.' " Terry Moore tells of a flight over the Grand Canyon with "the two of us alone in one of his big Constellations. He promised to buy me a wonderful lunch when we landed, but Howard never carried any money and I had only 97-c-. So that's all we could afford. We went back to Los Angeles flat broke."

"I'm not going after any man," insisted New York's flamboyant Congresswoman Bella Abzug. "I have only one man I go after: Martin Abzug, my husband." After making that perfectly clear, Bella officially announced that she would go after her old friend William Fitts Ryan in the June 20 Democratic primary. The reason: the legislature had drawn up new boundaries and abolished Bella's Manhattan district, forcing her to choose between withdrawal and friendship. Said Ryan's office: "We're very surprised and disappointed. She's some friend." -

Ever since Maria Callas' dwindling voice made operatic appearances hazardous, the soprano has looked for things to do. She made a movie of Medea, took up teaching (an opera class at Manhattan's Juilliard School of Music) and hinted at a return to the stage. Now, at 48, she has asked a friend, Actor Raf Vallone, to create a suitable movie role for her. Vallone is working on a scenario for a prima donna's dream --Callas is to play Callas in a movie about Callas. "She is one of the very few great individuals we have in this age of mass leveling," says Vallone. But how can he portray the warm friends and sulfurous enemies in La Callas' tumultuous private life? "That is a very delicate matter," sighs Vallone. "Nearly all of them are of signal notoriety." -

Sweden's scholarly King Gustaf VI Adolf is 89 years old and still rich in the esteem of his subjects. So when a constitutional commission announced a plan to strip the throne of its few remaining political powers, it also announced that there would be no change until the accession of 26-year-old Crown Prince Carl Gustaf Folke Hubertus Bernadotte. No longer head of the armed forces, no longer charged with resolving Cabinet crises, the future King will rattle around in a 700-room palace, having little to do except entertain dignitaries and pass out Nobel Prizes. Of all these changes, the prince says, "Monarchy is an old tradition, and I don't see how a country can live without tradition. It would be like walking on water. Nothing solid underneath." -

Japan's royal family descended from its divine status a generation ago, and now it cultivates a more mundane image. So there was no effort to disguise the triumphant glee with which seven-year-old Prince Aya, second son of Crown Prince Akihito, gripped his newest honor: a diploma from Tokyo's Gakushuin kindergarten. -

"There is this prejudice against actresses," fumed Barbra Streisand. "They're supposed to look pretty and read their lines, then shut up and go home." Filming a movie called Up the Sandbox, Barbra got herself deeper into her role of an identity-searching housewife by offering some qualified support for Women's Lib: "Job opportunities, yes. Abortion, yes. But there should also be a time for mothering. If a woman chooses to stay home and be a wife and mother, she shouldn't be put down for that. A good mother is a fantastic creation." That said, Barbra went back to the set to harangue Actor Jacobo Morales, who plays one of the characters in the housewife's fantasies: Fidel Castro. -

Only three years ago, Barry Goldwater Jr. was a blue-eyed, jut-jawed version of his father--but with a reputation built more upon swinging than politicking. Since his election as a Republican Representative from California, he has settled down and indeed is about to marry. His bride-to-be: Susan Gherman, 25, a business major at U.C.L.A., who skipped studies long enough to catch the Emmy Awards with her future husband in Hollywood. On affairs of state she says, "I am very conservative politically."

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