As Secret Agent James Bond, Actor Sean Cannery came to epitomize the icy-cool professional. Now retired from Bondian intrigue, Connery has found his latest role as Raisuli, "the last of the Barbary pirates," a hotter venture. Filmed in the arid deserts of Almeria, Spain, The Wind and the Lion co-stars Candice Bergen as Connery's American kidnap victim, and Brian Keith as President Theodore Roosevelt, whom Connery tries to blackmail. Based loosely on an actual historical incident, the movie required Connery to be costumed in Arab headgear so hot that it kept the actor within wandering distance of his air-conditioned trailer. As for Bergen, she calls her part "my favorite role ever --a sort of Annie Oakley in Morocco."

"Why would a man who is the beneficiary of $116 million worth of trusts want to look like he wears $25 suits?"

asked Men's Wear. Decrying Nelson Rockefeller's wardrobe as a "sartorial mess" suffering from a case of "terminal boredom," the editors sought suggestions on Rocky's behalf from four fashion designers. Bill Blass complained that "it's difficult to dress politicians because there's an aspect of insincerity about them." But Blass, along with two of the other designers, prescribed pin stripes for Rocky. "He would have new confidence in himself if he were to care how he looked and maybe people would start noticing him instead of his money," said Piero Dimitri helpfully. Don Robbie thought Rocky should show more old-fashioned flair. "I don't think he should bother with English tailoring.

After all," he reasoned, "Hollywood is as American as the American Revolution, so a blue-green sharkskin suit from the '30s should do the trick."

Once again the wolf had come to the Lambs' door. Facing imminent foreclosure on the remaining $360,000 of a $750,000 mortgage, the Lambs, oldest theatrical society in the U.S., last week staged a fund-raising centennial celebration in its creaky, comfortable clubhouse just off Times Square. Actors Peter Ustinov and Tony Randall, Actress Monique Van Vooren and former Mayor John Lindsay joined some 300 guests who dished out up to $375 each for a 17-course Chinese dinner and a stage show.

While Composer Jule Styne thumped the piano in accompaniment, Gypsy Star Angela Lansbury belted out a chorus of Everything's Coming Up Roses and happily observed: "The whole complexion of the joint is changing." For one thing, the Lambs had recently dropped a century-old rule that denied membership to women. Among the first to join: Jacqueline Onassis, who contributed $25,000 to the club's depleted treasury.

Widely known as a towering figure in pro basketball and a devout convert to the Islamic faith, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is less famous as an amateur musician. The son of a trombonist, the 7-ft. 2-in. Milwaukee Bucks center is a longtime jazz devotee who plays the piano, drums and reeds for relaxation.

Now he will be playing records as well --over his own weekly three-hour radio show on WNUW in Milwaukee. The program, to be broadcast live when Kareem is in town and on tape when he is on the road with the Bucks, will feature jazz recordings plus Kareem's commentary and interviews. "I don't expect to be at all nervous for the first show," says Kareem. "How could you be nervous when you have to play in front of 10,000 people every night?"

Billionaire Howard Hughes does not say much in public--and probably with good reason. After more than a decade of reclusive silence, the eccentric industrialist surfaced in 1972 to tell reporters in a nationally broadcast phone conversation that Author Clifford Irving had written a fraudulent Hughes biography.

During the conversation, Hughes not so tactfully referred to his former top aide, Robert A. Maheu, as "a no-good son of a bitch who stole me blind." The phone call helped send Irving to prison--and Maheu to court with a $17 million suit against Hughes for slander. After nearly three years of legal wrangling, a six-person jury in Los Angeles awarded Maheu $2.8 million in damages, to be paid by the Hughes-owned Summa Corporation. "Hughes used to tell me that "there isn't a man I can't buy or destroy,' " recalled Maheu after his victory last week. "I never realized that included me."

"My last month as a full-time columnist-reporter has now begun," began the countdown by Joseph Alsop in his syndicated newspaper column. The acerbic Washington watcher has been alluding to his upcoming retirement so often in recent columns, however, that some readers began to wonder whether he might be setting the stage for a series of farewell performances, like Mme.

Schumann-Heink or Frank Sinatra. Alsop, 64, was quick to dispel any such notion. Said Joe: "I'm engaged in writing a kind of summing-up series of columns, trying to compress 40-odd years in a few thousand words before I get the hell out." "Personally, I like sex, and I don't care what a man thinks of me as long as I get what I want from him --which is usually sex." Actress Valerie Perrine's candor, revealed in an interview with New York Times Reporter Judy Klemesrud, may not attract many serious suitors, but her powerfully honest portrayal of the stripper-turned-junkie wife of Lenny Bruce in the film Lenny may just earn her an Academy Award nomination. Perrine has already gone into training to become Hollywood's newest sex symbol. "I've experimented with almost every drug known to man," she told Klemesrud. "But now I don't even smoke grass. It gives me the munchies, and I can't afford to get fat."

Though he bears little outward resemblance to his dashing father, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, Manfred Rommel, 45, has apparently inherited some of the late Desert Fox's tactical skills. Last week Manfred swept to an easy election victory to become the first Christian Democratic mayor of Stuttgart. Manfred contends that he and his father, who directed the Third Reich's Afrika Korps in World War II, have a lot in common. Says Manfred, who is a financial expert: "My father was an outstanding mathematician. He was always trying to teach me the logarithm table he knew by heart, and infinitesimal calculus." Furthermore, says Manfred, he may find his military heritage useful.

"The generals had to be flexible, had to keep adapting their plans. In the bureaucracy, officials think that once they have a plan, that's it. They hang on to it for dear life."

His recording of Tip Toe Through the Tulips with Me was already a classic of sorts, and his marriage to Victoria Budinger on the Tonight show in December 1969 attracted 45 million viewers. Then Tiny Tim's life came unstrung like a used ukulele. First his fans deserted him, and then, last January, so did Miss Vicki, 22, and Daughter Tulip Victoria, 3. Last week, as Tiny, now in his mid-40s, attempted a comeback in the Midwest, it was revealed that Miss Vicki had been living on welfare in New Jersey since August, and had even worked briefly as a go-go dancer in a Camden, N.J., cocktail lounge. "This welfare thing was really a big surprise," declared Tiny, who says he sent his wife $100 each month in child support. "She called my lawyer just about three weeks ago, saying everything was wonderful."

Was there any hope for a reconciliation?

"She'd have to go everywhere with me, and, of course she'd have to take a blood test for VD," asserted the chirpy-voiced troubadour, adding magnanimously, "I hope to forgive her as the Lord forgives me."

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