As that swashbuckling smoothie of yesteryear, Errol Flynn stole more than the hearts of teen-age moviegoers. He also stole scenes from Leading Lady Olivia de Havilland. "He would do awfully naughty things," recalls the actress, who first starred with Flynn in Captain Blood (1935) when she was 19. "He would sometimes upstage me and take unfair advantage, which disturbed me deeply." Olivia, who went on to win two best-actress Oscars, was in New York to launch a seven-city eleven-week retrospective of Warner Bros, films--including three from the Flynn-De Havilland partnership (The Adventures of Robin Hood, They Died with Their Boots On and Captain Blood). "I really did have a crush on Errol," concedes Olivia. "And we were a great romantic pair on the screen. It was just some mysterious chemical thing."

There was little suspense but much good will in Hollywood last week when the French National Film Office dubbed Englishman Alfred Hitchcock, 76, Commander of the National Order of Arts and Letters. To add glamour to the presentation, the French called on the services of Jeanne Moreau, 48, the renowned French actress who has just directed her first movie, La Lumiere, and is in the U.S. arranging for its distribution. After graciously getting permission from Mrs. Hitchcock, Moreau bestowed a delicate kiss on one Hitchcockian jowl. The beaming director returned the favor, responding, "J'embrace toute la France."

"If I had started out as a drawing-room comic, people would have typecast me as that," insisted Actor Clint Eastwood, 46, who instead made his mark as the gunslinging hero of corpse-strewn westerns (High Plains Drifter; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly). Last week he rode into Sun Valley, Idaho, for a screening of The Outlaw Josey Wales, his new film about a post-Civil War outcast on the run. In Eastwood's audience: some 200 academicians, actors and film critics who had gathered for a six-day conference titled "Western Movies: Myths and Images." And what of Eastwood's own image? "I've untyped myself to some degree," he says. But he hasn't dropped his gun. His next movie: an up-to-the-minute shoot-'em-down titled The Enforcer.

Although Jimmy Carter is against forced bussing, he did not have the cheek to turn down a kiss from Elizabeth Taylor when she rushed forward to greet him during a campaign fund raiser at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel last week. Nor did the likely Democratic presidential nominee have a vote in hand: Liz is a British subject.

While speaking before a group of Indianapolis businessmen, former South Viet Nam Premier Nguyen Cao Ky was asked why the Saigon government had been unable to unite the Vietnamese people. It was "weak, corrupt and made too many errors," he answered. And had Ky been a villain? "I was not corrupt," retorted the exiled leader. "Perhaps that is the only thing I regret, because I have realized, after 14 months in this country, the value of money, whether it is clean or dirty."

Happily, all went peacefully at a Buckingham Palace powwow marking the 100th anniversary of treaties between the ancestors of six Canadian Indians and Elizabeth's great-great-grand-mum Queen Victoria. The Indians had surrendered 163,900 sq. mi. in Alberta and Saskatchewan in exchange for a guarantee of hunting and fishing rights. A dam in the area has made that promise a debt unpaid, however, and "in 1967 the Indians complained to Queen Elizabeth. "She said she would look into the matter," recalls Chief John Snow. The Indians are now seeking redress in a legal court instead of a royal one, so last week Snow and his colleagues decided not to commit lese majesty. "We talked about the feathers in my headdress," said Snow. Great White Mothers, apparently, are pretty much like Great White Fathers: not too helpful.

Henry Kissinger "oozed conceit from every pore," John Mitchell was "the most efficient Attorney General we have had for a long, long time," and Mississippi Senator John Stennis of filibuster fame is "one of the broadest-minded Americans I ever knew." Those views of Vermont Republican George Aiken, 83, dean of the U.S. Senate until his retirement last year, were published recently in his Senate Diary, January 1972-January 1975 (The Stephen Greene Press). One noteworthy Aikenism based on 34 years in the Senate: "The politicians I have known are no greater or lesser sinners than the average person listed in the telephone book."

They came not to harry Harry but to help him. Harry Reems, that is,'the actor convicted on obscenity charges in Tennessee for his singular stint with Linda Lovelace in Deep Throat. When Mike Nichols, Colleen Dewhurst, Ben Gazzara, Gay Talese and Ramsey Clark gathered last week at a New York fund raiser for Reems' appeal, the talk was of civil liberties, not licentiousness. The celebrities fear that allowing Bible Belt morality to cinch Harry's trousers will stifle creativity. "It's not about taste," said Nichols. "It's about freedom of expression. People should be free to explore anything they are moved to." A second worry: the Reems case sets a precedent for criminal prosecution of actors whose movie roles may be deemed obscene in some localities but not in others.

It was enough to make an eagle blush. There, dressed in her victory sash and shoes, before a gala Bicentennial backdrop was San Diego's own Nona Montague, 28, who had just been crowned Miss Nude U.S.A. in San Bernardino, Calif. Among the 17 judges was Comedian Bill Dana. "I found the sexiest part of the day to be when the girls first came out to be judged," reports Dana. "They all had their clothes on. When they disrobed, it lost a little."

Former Federal Judge G. Harrold Carswell, who once aspired to a seat on the Supreme Court, was in a Florida hospital suffering from "nervous exhaustion and depression" last week and facing a court case of no grandeur. Carswell, 56, a 1970 Nixon nominee to the high bench whom the Senate rejected (51 to 45) after disclosure of his racist statements and mediocre court record, has been charged by a grand jury with "battery" and "attempting to commit an unnatural and lascivious act." According to State Attorney Harry Morrison, Carswell, now a Florida lawyer and bankruptcy referee, struck up a conversation with another man in a Tallahassee shopping center rest room that was under police observation as a homosexual meeting place. The pair, said Morrison, drove off in Carswell's car and parked in a wooded area where Carswell "actually and intentionally" touched his companion, a police undercover agent who responded by making an arrest. Carswell, who is married and has four children, has denied any wrongdoing.

Not many people would write "Dear Popo" or "Dear Eppie" for advice on love or etiquette, so the celebrated sisters became Abigail Van Buren and Ann Landers when they went into the counseling-by-column business. But back in Sioux City, Iowa, last week they were Popo (Pauline Esther) and Eppie (Esther Pauline) Friedman again at the 40th reunion of their high school class. Abby was amazed that 300 of the 400 in the original class turned out: "I figured only the thin and the rich would attend." Did her old classmates seek Abby's advice? "Well, a few asked for my private address so they could send me letters."

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