Was it farce, tragedy or bathos? Maria Schneider, 22, star of Last Tango in Paris, signed herself into a psychiatric hospital while filming Carlo Ponti's The Babysitter in Rome. Not for treatment, but simply to be with her inseparable companion of the past two years, Joan ("Joey") Townsend, 28, the daughter of ex-president of Avis Robert Townsend, who wrote Up the Organization. Joan had been picked up that morning at Fiu-micino Airport, babbling irrationally. On learning that her friend had been taken to a psychiatric hospital, Maria rushed to join her. The following three days were macabre. Paparazzi roamed around the hospital, snapping the two girls in various embraces. Before the couple was transferred to a private clinic, which Maria left shortly afterward, the city of la dolce vita was scandalized, and several politicians asked for an investigation. Maria's friends were sympathetic. Said a fellow Actress Sydne Rome: "What she did was actually, for her, an act of mercy--hurting herself in order to help another person." But whether Schneider, who has already been dropped from Bertolucci's 1900, will keep her current job is unclear. "It is the first time I have had to go see an actress in an asylum," said Ponti. "This affair is very sad--humanly sad."

"The profession of chef is being given its true value," said Paul Bocuse, 49, proprietor and chef of his eponymous three-star restaurant near Lyon. This week Bocuse will be made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor by President Giscard d'Estaing. In return, Bocuse, together with three other three-star chefs, will cook a five-course luncheon for Giscard to demonstrate the glories of the new French cuisine that emphasizes improvisation with the day's freshest food. The chefs will go to market that same morning to choose the food and then they will take over the Elysee Palace kitchen. The wine will be mostly vintage '26, the year in which both Bocuse and Giscard were born. Bocuse has already approved the stove: "It is a real old-fashioned one that is perfect to cook on."

For several years, I've stayed at home, while you had all your fun

And every year that's gone by another baby's come

There's gonna be some changes made, right here on nursery hill

You set this chicken your last time,

'Cos now I've got the Pill.

This blunt piece of birth control information is provided by Loretta Lynn, 38, in her latest single The Pill. Many major country-and-western stations want no part of it, however, and are simply not playing the disc. Lynn, one of the top C&W singers in the country, protests: "It isn't as dirty as some of my other songs. I wrote one the other day that is so dirty I have to close my eyes when I sing it." Moreover, she wholeheartedly endorses The Pill. Married at 13, she says, "I had four kids before I was 18. If I had had the Pill, I would've been popping it like popcorn."

"I've never lived by the ocean before," said Genevieve Bujold, 32. The French Canadian star is now living in a Malibu beach house with her son Matthew, 7, by her former husband, Director Paul Almond. Genevieve made her name in such French movies as La Guerre Est Finie and King of Hearts, but found that the Continent had its drawbacks. "Life there is just too difficult to cope with," she said. This month Genevieve must go to Italy to film Brian de Palma's Deja Vu, but she will come home to Malibu not Montreal. As she explained: "Scripts don't just flutter down with the snowflakes in Montreal."

The Good Ship Lollipop was obviously not quite the thing for Accra. So instead, U.S. Ambassador to Ghana Shirley Temple Black, 46, jogged a local high-life stomp before a delighted crowd. En paste for less than three months, Shirley has already started coming to grips with local tribal languages, tossing off "akwaaba " (welcome in Twi) and "oy-iwala donn " (thank you in Ga) without even a hint of her notorious childhood lisp. Resident Americans who greeted Shirley with skepticism now call her a solid plus for Uncle Sam. Said one Ghanaian official happily: "It's good to have a famous public person here who may get us more attention in America."

"I know people think it is funny to hear about me playing a Victorian maiden," acknowledged six-time Wife Zsa Zsa Gabor, sixtyish. Far funnier to watch. Co-starring with Sister Eva, two years younger, Zsa Zsa opened last week at Chicago's Arlington Park Theater in a five-week revival of the classic farce Arsenic and Old Lace. "It's going to make theatrical history," announced Eva. The original script has been changed. The two old Brooklyn ladies who mercy-kill homeless tramps have been given a recent European ancestry to explain why Eva and Zsa Zsa romp round like two cocottes from the court of mad King Ludwig of Bavaria. Said Producer David Lonn, wiping a tear from his eye: "They still don't realize how funny they are together." -

An Okie from Muskogee would rather die than appear in anything unAmerican. No sweat. Huckleberry Finn contains just the role for Merle Haggard. On March 25, over ABC, he will make his dramatic debut in a TV movie of Mark Twain's classic. He will play Duke, the sweet-talking con man. His country music fans may be disappointed. "I wouldn't want to mix singin' in with the actin'," explains Merle. "That way, if I mess up, I can at least salvage something for my career."

Poor Tessa Dahl. In December she won the only female role in John Huston's The Man Who Would Be King --that of a femme fatale. But no sooner had Patricia Meal's 17-year-old daughter dashed off to a fat farm to slim down by 20 Ibs. than she was replaced. It seems the scriptwriters had trouble working a Caucasian into the Asian epic. Instead, the role went to Shakira Baksh, 27, the Indian wife of Michael Caine, 41, who is co-starring in the movie now on location in Marrakesh. Said Caine, "It was a very strange experience working with my wife. Because I was pulling for her all the time, I forgot completely about my own personality and found myself doing her thinking for her." Chauvinist Caine prefers his wife to be at home. "She's not going to make a career out of this," he predicted confidently. "She's going to have lots of kids."

It was the usual kind of rockers' bash. On Sept. 23, 1974, after the Scottish group Average White Band's show at the Troubadour, Entrepreneur Ken Moss, 31, asked the lads back to his Hollywood Hills pad. Camp followers included Cher Bono. "We all sat around the coffee table and somebody started passing this vial of white powder," one guest told Rolling Stone later. "Everyone assumed it was coke." In fact, it was "China White" heroin.

Those who sniffed became ill, and nine hours later the band's drummer, Robbie Mclntosh, 24, was dead of a heroin overdose. Cher, who didn't take a snort, is credited with saving Bassist Alan Gorrie's life by walking him around all night, preventing him from lapsing into a coma. Last week it was revealed that a Los Angeles County grand jury had charged Moss, whose last address was British Honduras, with murder. Ironically, Robbie's last single with the band, Pick Up the Pieces, is currently heading for the top of the charts.

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