He's 80 and still kicking, and just to prove it, Comedian George Burns paired up with Singer-Actress Carol Charming last week and took to the dance floor. George, who has just written a new book titled Living It Up, or, They Still Love Me in Altoona, had come to New York on a stage tour with Channing, 53, and at a preshow party in Manhattan, the two showed their style with some bump and hustle. Well, sort of. "Carol was doing the hustle, but I was still doing the peabody. When I like something, I stick to it," noted Burns. "The only ones who can still dance the peabody are Jimmy Cagney and myself." Pause. "He's very nice to dance with."

After attending a Broadway revival of the musical Guys and Dolls last Friday, Richard Burton, 50, announced that he was staging a rerun of his own. Next afternoon, he took blonde, leggy British model Susan Hunt, as his third wife. Burton, who won a quickie Haitian divorce from his two-time wife Elizabeth Taylor in July, and Hunt, recently divorced from British Race Car Driver James ("The Shunt") Hunt, were married in Arlington, Va. Less exotic than his last wedding reception (Burton and Taylor celebrated their remarriage in Botswana last October with two hippos in attendance), the modest guest list in Arlington included Hunt's erstwhile escort Brooke Williams.

"I really don't know what's happening; I just sing for my own amazement," says George Savalas, 46, curly-haired kid brother of TV's Telly Savalas, 52. George, who usually plays harried Detective Sergeant Stavros on the Kojak series, has been playing to New York nightclub audiences lately --all thanks to an album of Greek folk tunes that he recorded last April. Judging from Savalas' enthusiasm after one performance, he may have brighter prospects as a cafe crooner than a TV cop. Says he: "I was walking four feet off the ground and singing like a cannon." A cannon? "Like a cannon and a bird."

From the look of it, Veteran Actress Jacqueline Bisset is finally in over her head. During six weeks on The Deep, a new movie based on Author Peter Benchley's tale of treasure hunting off Bermuda, Bisset has spent much of her time in scuba gear under 80 ft. of water. Apart from some nasty jellyfish stings, the actress's worst moment came during a subaqueous scene with Co-Star Nick Nolte that called for her to lose her mouthpiece and head for the surface. "His bubbles came up from beneath me and I couldn't see anything," she recalled. "I kept trying to find the damn regulator and for a couple of seconds I thought, 'Uh-oh, this is a damn silly way to go.' " Adds Bisset unnecessarily: "I'm not a very good swimmer."

"It's a kind of pleasure of limited responsibility," muses Francois Truffaut, 44, considering his film role in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Having coped with heavier duties as a director (Jules and Jim, The Story of Adele H.), Truffaut is now appearing in his first American movie as an actor, under the direction of Steven Spielberg, 28, Hollywood's hottest prodigy (Jaws). The new film, which depicts an encounter between earthlings and extraterrestrial beings, is being shot in elaborate secrecy at an abandoned Air Force hangar in Mobile, Ala. So far the secrecy seems to suit Spielberg just fine. "Directing a movie with Truffaut on the set," he says, "is like having Renoir around when you're still painting by numbers."

Peter O'Toole is Roman Emperor Tiberius, Malcolm McDowell is the Emperor Caligula--but Author Gore Vidal is the kingfish when it comes to his newest screen project. "It's called Gore Vidal's Caligula and not just Caligula, since that gives me some control," he says of the film now being produced in Italy by Franco Rossellini. Still, in a rare lapse from his usual impermeable poise, the screenwriter confessed, "Control entails responsibility, and sometimes I just don't know what's going on." Vidal expects his appearance on TV's Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, which he will film in Hollywood next month, will prove less perplexing. "To understand Mary Hartman is to understand America," he said. "If Tiberius had watched the show, he would still be alive today."

"I was the object of his jealousy, violent and without limits. Friends and family, even memories became a threat to our relationship." So writes Actress Liv Ullmann, 37, describing life with Swedish Film Maker Ingmar Bergman. Liv's recollections of her former lover, current director (Face to Face) and the father of her daughter Linn, 9, are published this week in her autobiography titled The Change. If Ullmann takes a sharp focus on Bergman, she is equally exacting about some other famous men she has met. Among them: Soviet Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and former President Richard Nixon, all of whom sat down to dinner with the actress one night. Reports Liv: "Gromyko is pale, but blushes every time his name is mentioned. Brezhnev looks vain, but I like him immediately when he takes my hand and says he loves The Emigrants. Nixon's makeup is melting, and I feel sorry for him. He would have made a marvelous tragic figure in a Bergman film, had he been a better actor."

After playing a twelve-year-old hooker in Taxi Driver, a child murderess in Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane and a gangster's moll in Bugsy Malone, Actress Jodie Foster is finally cleaning up her act. Her new role: a tomboy heiress in a Walt Disney kid flick titled Candleshoe. Now on location at Stratford-upon-Avon, Foster has been skate boarding for fun and profiting from her work on the set with Co-Stars David Niven and Helen Hayes. "I don't feel comfortable working with children," pipes Foster, 13, who appeared with some 200 child actors in Bugsy Malone. "Sure, they learn their lines quick, but their timing is so different. With adults," she adds loftily, "you give a better performance."

If you like them onstage, you'll love them on the screen. At least that's the hope of moviemakers who are now trying to turn ballet stars into box office draws at the cinema. In Spain, Dancer Rudolf Nureyev, 38, has stepped into the role of legendary screen lover in Ken Russell's film Valentino. His sole dancing assignment in the film: a 1920s tango. At the same time in New York, fellow Kirov Defector Mikhail Baryshnikov has tried a few lines of his own in The Turning Point, a ballet movie featuring Misha, 28, and Leslie Browne, 19, as a pair of dancer-lovers. For Browne, a last-minute stand-in for ailing Gelsey Kirkland, the movies are a grand jete from obscurity in the corps of George Balanchine's New York City Ballet. To ease her jitters, Partner Baryshnikov has played the cheerful clown, and even nibbled at her ears backstage. "I was terrified at first," she confessed last week, "but it's worn off now."

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