The woman who became famous by studying the life of adolescents in Samoa is now examining her own youth. At 70, Anthropologist Margaret Mead is publishing her memoirs. The greatest influence on her life, she recalls, was her relationship with her paternal grandmother, who moved in with Margaret's father and his bride after their marriage and was given the best room in whatever house they lived in till her death some 30 years later. A former teacher, she "taught me observation--she started me observing my young sisters." Now a grandmother herself, Mead insists that "children need three generations to grow up with. Grandparents give you a sense of how things were, how things are. They know the world isn't going to end because you don't use two washcloths or something. They know change better than anyone else."

It was always a disappointment to the late Duke of Windsor that his wife was not entitled to be addressed as Her Royal Highness. In accordance with King George VTs decision, the former Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson, after her marriage to the man who had been King Edward VIM, had to be content with being a mere duchess. Now Patrick Montague-Smith, editor of Debrett's, the authoritative guide to the British aristocracy, says it was all a mistake. The rules of British heraldry permit a wife to take her title from her husband, and since Edward remained a Royal Highness after his abdication, the duchess should have been called Her Royal Highness. "It is doubtful how knowledgeable the British and Commonwealth ministers of the crown were on [this] constitutional and legal issue," commented Montague-Smith.

"I learned the biggest lesson of my life in Munich," declared Australian Swimmer Shane Gould earnestly. "I learned how to lose." Could this be the same 15-year-old girl who won three gold medals, one silver and one bronze at the XX Olympiad--more than anyone else except U.S. Swimmer Mark Spitz? The very same, but last July Shane had carefully predicted her times for all five events, written "Here's hoping" underneath and sealed the estimates in an envelope. Back home in Sydney she opened it, found that she had bettered only one of her predictions, failed to equal the other four.

After nearly half a century in the theater, Director-Actress Margaret Webster, 67, had more than enough tales to fill a book. So she wrote one (Don't Put Your Daughter on the Stage; Alfred A. Knopf; $10) and celebrated its publication with a party for old friends and wide-eyed admirers on the stage of Manhattan's Imperial Theater.

Among Webster's more acidic recollections: when she was hired to direct an opera at the Met, Conductor Fritz Stiedry warned her, "You must not think of singers as musicians. God gives larynxes to stableboys." After directing Paul Robeson, Webster wondered, "Is it possible to be a great Othello without being a good Othello?" She also concluded, after a few bouts with the actor's temperament, that "I have not been playing Svengali to his Trilby, but Frankenstein to his monster." According to Webster, Marlon Brando "gave himself time to show, in A Streetcar Named Desire, that he could be a great actor and then went to Hollywood and wasn't." As for Hollywood sex goddesses, Webster recalls Dame May Whitty, her mother, remarking of Lana Turner, "I don't know what Miss Turner has got that I haven't. Only I've had it longer."

Sir Noel Coward arrived in London for the trillionth revival of his 1930 play Private Lives--this one starring Maggie Smith as Amanda and her real-life husband Robert Stephens as Amanda's ex-mate. Noting that there probably are at least a dozen Private Lives even now on the boards, a reporter asked Sir Noel what directions he had to offer young actors playing in the durable comedy. The 72-year-old playwright obliged with some durable advice: "Speak clearly and don't bump into anyone." He is very happy living in the Swiss Alps, added Sir Noel. "I get along without all these taxes, you know. I can't afford a roll and butter in London."

Humorist S.J. Perelman has also given up London. Two years ago he pronounced life in Manhattan "nasty and brutish," denounced the city as "a termitary" and fled to England. Familiarity with London seems to breed homesickness. "There is such a thing as too much couth," said the author, returning to the termitary. "English life is rather bland. Their rye bread has no caraway seeds, and their name for corned beef is salt beef--and it doesn't compare with what you can get on the Upper West Side or the Lower East Side. In my waking hours in London I saw myself as Joel McCrea in Foreign Correspondent, wearing a double-breasted trench coat and hiding in windmills. I finally realized I was Perelman from Providence, Rhode Island."

Although best known for his paintings of freckled Boy Scouts, benign grandmas and corn-fed coeds, which ran for decades as covers for the Saturday Evening Post, Norman Rockwell, 78, also paints individual portraits from time to time. His latest subject, who journeyed to Stockbridge, Mass., for his two-hour sitting clothed in a sweater and open-necked shirt: Frank Sinatra. "He is a fine person and a fine American," declared Rockwell, adding, "I never discuss my fees."

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