Snapping crocodiles in a game preserve in northern Kenya, Photographer Peter Beard, 37, eyed a 5-ft. 10-in. Somali tribeswoman with the face and bearing of Egypt's classic Queen Nefertiti. "She was the most beautiful African I had ever seen," says Beard. "And in Africa, you learn to snag things when you see them." So Beard quickly snagged the tribeswoman--known as Iman --away from her chores tending the family's 500 cattle and sheep. He took lots of photographs and persuaded the Wilhelmina Model Agency in New York to sign her up. Iman, 20, who speaks fluent English, learned in the missionary schools she attended until age 15, arrived in Manhattan last week looking well-coiffed, made-up and clothed in jungle chic. "She's very distinguished, with a beautiful head and lovely long throat," observed Diana Vreeland, former editor of Vogue. Wilhelmina projected Iman's first-year salary at $80,000, prompting Beard to boast: "I feel like it's My Fair Lady." Iman's own goal: "To see the world."

Woody Allen and Zero Mostel playing it straight? Director Martin Ritt (Sounder, Hud) has unsmilingly cast the two in Columbia Pictures' The Front, a drama about Hollywood blacklisting in the '50s. For Mostel it's all bitter experience, for he was interrogated by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955 and scorned by movie producers for a decade. For Allen, playing a bookie who lets a blacklisted writer use his name, drama is all new, and he claims to be, as usual, nervous. "I can't guarantee the outcome," he says on the set. "I'm going to prove that comedians don't make great actors." The lovable shlemiel of Sleeper and other banana-peel epics is playing love scenes without his usual co-star and onetime roommate Diane Keaton. "We're just very very good friends," insists Allen. "We haven't been, uh, that way for years." Allen is even managing without his familiar props. "There is nothing big in the film," he says with a touch of regret. "No big bananas or big breasts."

In Paris, it's New Jimmy's and Le Regine. In Monte Carlo, the snob spots for drinking and dancing are the Maona (Tahitian), Para-dize (Brazilian) and New Jimmyz (art deco). The woman who manages all this, sometime Singer Regine (nee Zylberberg), 45, now plans new discotheques in Rio and Manhattan. "Life begins with the first cocktail," says the lady who introduced le twist to Paris. "She only sleeps three hours a night," adds her husband and former secretary, Roger Choukroun. The cabaret queen is also branching out into fashion design. Her first collection, introduced at a Paris ready-to-wear show last week, features--what else?--evening wear specially designed for dancing. With it all, redheaded Regine finds time to rehearse for a new film, The Seven Per Cent Solution, with Laurence Olivier and Vanessa Redgrave. Her part: the madam in an exclusive bordello.

"An odd man... unpleasant... very artificial." Many people have said worse things about ex-President Nixon, but the speaker this time was his own Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. The occasion was a black-tie dinner in Ottawa given in Kissinger's honor by Canadian External Affairs Minister Allan MacEachen. After the toasts were delivered, Kissinger evidently assumed that the tabletop microphones had been turned off, but a technician made the mistake of only turning them down. So newsmen, who had not been admitted to the banquet, soon heard Kissinger's familiar voice rumbling out of the pressroom loudspeaker. The Secretary acknowledged that Nixon was "one of our better Presidents, very decisive in his own way." But he went on to say: "One thing that I have never understood is how he became a politician. He really dislikes people. He hated to meet new people." Moreover, "he barely governed during the last 18 months of his presidency, as things got worse with Watergate." Kissinger was as frank about John Kennedy, whom he liked, but "what did he accomplish" in the end? As for Jackie, "she is sexy. A hard woman who knows what she wants."

The dog-eared marriage register in the remote African village of Kasane, Botswana, now has its place in the history of show business romance. There, beneath the names of hundreds of local tribesmen, are the signatures of Elizabeth Taylor, 43, and Richard Burton, 49. The pair, divorced in June 1974 after a stormy ten-year marriage, tied the knot again while on safari in Africa. Liz dressed for the occasion in a green dress edged with lace and guinea-fowl feathers. Burton looked more prepared for the golf course in white slacks, a red shirt and matching socks. "Do you appreciate the consequences of this marriage?" asked Ambrose Masalila, the district commissioner performing the service. The roving-eyed Burton said yes --as did Liz, newly liberated from the attentions of Used-Car Salesman Henry Wynberg. After the ceremony, the couple celebrated with champagne on the banks of the Chobe River as hippos and a rhino placidly looked on.

"I believe everyone will regret her absence, including yours truly Truman Capote," wrote the author to the Los Angeles Times. "She is one helluva writer," agreed Producer Robert Evans (Love Story, The Godfather). The writer: syndicated Gossip Columnist Joyce Haber, 42, who was ousted by the Times after nine years of being cheered, feared and courted as Hollywood's most powerful journalistic sibyl. "The day of Hollywood gossip is absolutely over," says Entertainment Editor Charles Champlin in explanation of the firing. Newsroom gossips claim that the Times has been displeased with Haber's tendency to report on producers, lawyers and agents as much as on the more glamorous celebrities. Retorts Haber: "Champlin wanted a tradey column." Blaming her fate on "all those terrible people" at the Times, she plans to concentrate on her novel-in-progress, The Users, a saga about Hollywood types playing power and sex games. Says she: "Now I'm thinking of including the press in my book and changing the title to The Used."

Holding tight to Husband Carlo Ponti, 61, Sophia Loren looked radiant and unruffled as she trooped about the U.S. promoting her latest film, Poopsie and Company. Can it be that the rumors about the Pontis' marriage are wrong? "I never snap at Carlo because he is always right" was all the serene Sophia would venture. As lines like that indicate, Sophia is not the world's foremost feminist. When the suggestion came up that the actress is regarded as a sex symbol, she answered: "I am a woman, mother and wife. If that means I am a sex symbol, I am for it 100%."

Sifting through old papers in a Dutch astronomy laboratory, scientists came across an unexpected treasure: 17 letters and postcards written by Albert Einstein between 1916 and 1918 to his friend the Dutch astronomer and mathematician Willem de Sitter. The discovery, reported in Nature, reveals an esoteric interchange between the two men about the theory of relativity. Einstein's observations range from the specific (he computed the radius of the universe as R=10' lightyears) to the metaphoric ("I compare space to a cloth ...") to the peevish ("Your solution corresponds to no physical possibility"). But the two scholars (De Sitter was 45 and Einstein 38 in 1917) frequently break off their strings of formulas to complain to each other about their frail health.

Italy's answer to Cary Grant was enjoying the role of tour guide as he strolled through Manhattan last week with a long-haired beauty on his arm. The young lady taking in the sights with Marcello Mastroianni, 51, simply had to be a movie star, with those smoldering dark eyes--but no. "One actor in the family is enough," said Barbara Mastroianni, 23, the actor's daughter by his wife, Flora Carabella. Barbara, a costume designer in Rome, accompanied her father to the U.S. to promote his new film, Down the Ancient Stairs. Despite the obvious affection between father and daughter, the romantic actor wants it to be clear that he is not a family man. "You Americans, you always have to have a conventional image of a father and a daughter," he chided. "That image makes people happy, but not my daughter and me. It's nice, but..." Then Papa Marcello sawed away on an imaginary violin.

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