For a bear of very little brain, Win-nie-the-Pooh has displayed remarkable staying power since his creation in 1926 by Author A.A. Milne and Illustrator Ernest H. Shepard. The classic children's books about Pooh's adventures have been translated into 22 languages and inspired million-dollar businesses in posters, party favors and other products. But one who did not celebrate Pooh's 50th birthday last week was Christopher Robin Milne, 56, the author's son, whose 1974 autobiography, The Enchanted Places, described the trials of growing up in the shadow of a Teddy bear. "Pooh is a toy I had as a child," says Mime, now a bookstore owner in Devon, England. "The exploitation of the books makes me sick. I do hope there will be no more of these anniversaries." Anyway, as Pooh's gloomy pal Eeyore philosophized in The House at Pooh Corner: "What are birthdays? Here today and gone tomorrow."

The opening-night crowd included a plastic surgeon who had recently done some work on the star's chin, which was a little puffy. Still, there was no mistaking the face--or the figure--of Elizabeth Ray, who last week made her stage debut in St. Charles, Ill., at the Pheasant Run Playhouse in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? Ray, whose sexual dalliance with her boss, Wayne Hays, brought about the Ohio Congressman's downfall earlier this year, quickly demonstrated that her acting ability was on a par with her secretarial skills. Though she seemed in her element on a massage table and got a good laugh when she sat down at a desk and tried to type, she generally spoke in a whiny monotone, delivered her lines by rote, and in one scene answered a door buzzer before it buzzed. "I knew that I wasn't going to walk off with an Academy Award," she confessed later, "but this is a morality play, and I can relate to that so well."

When husky-voiced Singer Edie Adams whispered her final "pick one up and smoke it some time" back in 1973 and quit making TV ads for Muriel Cigars, the fire went out of the company's sales. Last week in Manhattan the stogie makers introduced a new Miss Muriel to light up the home screens. She is Susan Anton, 26, a former Miss California who beat out 400 other aspirants for a four-year contract with Consolidated Cigars Corp. "I don't smoke anything; I was told it would stunt my growth," confesses Anton, who stands 5 ft. 11 in. So why had she won? "Probably because of my smile," answered Susan. "My mother always said she liked that best about me." All of which left Adams, now 49 and still a concert and supper-club headliner, feeling wistful. "It's the best thing that ever happened to me," she says of her Muriel job. "If they ever want a Mae West type, I'm ready."

He is best known for his impassioned speeches on behalf of the civil rights struggle, but Georgia State Senator Julian Bond has recently been involved in a race drama of a different kind--as an actor in Greased Lightning, a Warner Bros, screen biography of Stock Car Racer Wendell Scott. The film, scheduled to appear early next year, features Actor-Comedian Richard Pryor as Scott, Pom Grier as his wife and Bond as one of her former suitors who returns to rev up a new romance. Is the nine-year veteran of the Georgia General Assembly considering a career in the movies? Says Julian: "Definitely not. It's a more insecure profession than politics."

"I felt like a referee who never got the fighters into the ring," laughed Soprano Beverly Sills, referring to the visit of Jack Ford, 24, and Jack Carter, 26, to her TV talk show Lifestyles. The hoped-for debate between the sons of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, scheduled for airing in the New York area on Oct. 30, never came off because both insisted on separate equal-time interviews. Meeting off-camera for the first time, however, the pair engaged in some cautious sparring. "I hope to see you again," said Ford. "I'll see you at the Inauguration," responded Carter. "You can be my guest," said Ford. Summed up Sills: "It was awesome to look at the two boys because they are both carbon copies of their fathers. There was a little bit of tension." Maybe, but the show's only knockout must have been Beverly.

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