Actress Elizabeth Taylor, who charmed Iranian Ambassador Ardeshir Zahedi during a visit to Washington, D.C. (TIME, May 17), proved a little less enchanting to the ambassador's countrymen. Invited on Iran Air's inaugural nonstop flight from New York to Tehran, Taylor came playing the role of temperamental tourist. On arrival she sent Tehran police in search of a missing hand-carried package. Rumored to be a jewelry box, it turned out to be some Glenfiddich pure malt scotch. Then came a minor row at her hotel when she found her accommodations were not the royal suite she expected, and more trouble when she passed up several social functions. By the time she had taken some photos for the family album and finished her ten-day visit, she was being criticized not only for her manners but for her looks and taste. Liz, carped Zan-E-Ruz, Iran's largest women's magazine, "is a fattish, short, big-busted woman with poor makeup, and totally out of fashion." sb "She predicted we wouldn't do well against Chicago last weekend, and they kicked the living dickens out of us," noted Oakland Athletics Owner Charles Finley of his new employee. She is Laurie Brady, an astrologer, columnist (the National Star), and now Finley's designated team prophet. Brady has drawn astrological charts on all the Oakland players, as well as on Finley himself, and is telling her boss what's in his stars, athletically speaking. Maybe Finley shouldn't listen. Brady says Kansas City will top Oakland in the Western Division, and that three A's aces, Pitcher Vida Blue, Third Baseman Sal Bando and Outfielder Joe Rodi, are headed for injuries. Specific game results? The A's will win in Boston June 15 and 16. Brady is less precise about her own future in baseball. "Mr. Finley is rather difficult to work with," she concedes. "When I tell him negative things, he gets angry."

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Heavyweight Champ Muhammad AM says he is slowing up at 33, but he is still fast enough to suit one admirer, Photographer-Actress Candice Bergen. After snapping pix at ringside as Ali battered English Boxer Richard Dunn in Munich, Candy rhapsodized: "He's so breathtakingly beautiful, absolutely dazzling. He's just like a mirrored ball. You can't keep track of him while he's dancing around in front of you." Before Ali's victory, Candice won, with the help of NBC, a bout of her own--against German tradition forbidding women a ringside seat. Was it worth it? "Watching a fight is kind of like watching a car accident," concluded Candy. "It's horrible, but you can't take your eyes off it. I just sat there thinking Ali was a beautiful sculpture and I didn't want to see it get damaged."

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"George has us dragging," croaks Comedian Redd Foxx, describing the rigors of moviemaking under Director George (LaughIn) Schlatter. But working in his first Hollywood film, Norman ... Is That You?, does have its uplifting moments for the 53-year-old Foxx. His role is that of a Tucson, Ariz., cleaning store owner who suddenly finds himself with a philandering wife and homosexual son. Foxx's recourse? Tamara Dobson, once the karate-chopping star of Cleopatra Jones, and now a happily convenient hooker. Despite Foxx's pen chant for off-camera cuts ("Watch out, or you'll get short," he told one towering stagehand), the 5-ft. 8-in. actor has been Mr. Tame with Tamara--who stands 6 ft. 2 in. Says she: "He's a sweet, dirty old man."

After a hard day of crime fighting as TV's Six Million Dollar Man, what does Actor Lee Majors come home to at night? A 28-year-old million-dollar baby named Farrah Fawcett-Majors, that's what. In television commercials, the Texas-born Farrah is most familiar as the lion-maned saleswoman for Mercury's Cougar, Wella Balsam's conditioner and Ultra Brite toothpaste. Starting this fall, her big pitch will be in the show, not the ads, as she stars in a new prime-time TV series titled Charley's Angels. Her role: a former policewoman who becomes a private detective's assistant. Since she will have neither the telescopic zoom eye nor the nuclear-powered prosthetic limbs provided to Husband Lee in his role, Farrah has been toning up for her part with four hours of tennis each day. Known as one of Hollywood's friendliest folks, she may have to tone up her toughness too. Carl Reiner describes a typical Farrah temper tantrum: "She told me she was mad at her maid, but knew how to get even. I asked how. She said, 'I'm not going to fix her hair any more!' " Sounds like Charley's angel, all right. -

In earlier times the festive scene in Stockbridge, Mass., would have been an apt subject for one of Illustrator Norman Rockwell's Saturday Evening Post covers. Blessed with the first rainless day in a week, 2,000 marchers and 10,000 spectators turned out for a Bicentennial salute to the artist, who for 24 years has lived in the small Berkshire town. Rock well, 82, and Wife Molly, 80, sat happily atop a flatbed truck during a 90-minute parade that included floats by Kiwanians, Rotarians, Masons, garden clubs and a dog obedience school. The theme: tableaux based on some of Rockwell's 317 Post covers. The durable illustrator, who seldom paints any more but still works at his drawing board every day, pronounced his Americana-type day a delight. "I'm tired," he confessed afterward, "but proud." -

"At parties, guests met me for the sixth time and never remembered the other five," says Sylvia Wallace, wife of bestselling Author Irving Wallace (The Chapman Report, The Prize). "You feel so wiped out, so nothing when you're married to a well-known person, someone who has fans." A former ghostwriter for Hedda Hopper and Sheilah Graham, and the West Coast editor of Modern Screen when she married Wallace in 1941, Sylvia has now gone in search of her own fans with a first novel titled The Fountains. A libidinal yarn about five women in a California beauty spa, The Fountains may be a gusher. Though the book will not go on sale until later this month, Sylvia has already collected a $500,000 advance from her publisher, William Morrow, and $250,000 from the sale of screen rights. "We both have a talent for novel-writing," says Mrs. Wallace, denying that Mr. Wallace gave her any help. "Some people are trying to make it sound as if I was cloned as a writer. Well, I wasn't."

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