For a change, it wasn't a battle of the Nielsens that put the TV networks in a toe-to-toe fight for first place. It was a tug of war and other picnic sports at Pepperdine University in southern California, featuring stars such as ABC's Lynda (Wonder Woman) Carter, NBC's Ben (Gemini Man) Murphy and CBS's Telly (Kojak) Savalas. In all, 24 prime-time principals channeled their energies into swimming, running and biking--all for the sake of a Nov. 13 ABC special titled Battle of the Network Stars. The winner on the playing fields of Pepperdine, as on the tube this season, was ABC, whose team members walked off with $20,000 in prize money apiece--as well as a few regrets. Farrah Fawcett Majors of Charlie's Angels rooted so fervently for her ABC tug of warriors that she lost her voice and missed a full two days of work.

Let the pound collapse; the show must go on. And so it did, as Queen Elizabeth opened Britain's new $30 million National Theater in London. The star of the official curtain raising: Actor Laurence Olivier, 69, who founded the National Theater Acting Company in 1962, and who appeared onstage to thank "all relevant councils, committees, boards and departments, indeed, Your Majesty's treasury, not to speak of our brother and sister taxpayers." Olivier, who has recently forsaken his own stage career (but not films) after battling a strength sapping muscle disorder, finished his speech by wishing to those who follow, "joy eternal." While the audience, which included Playwrights Eugene Ionesco and J.B. Priestley, applauded, the trouper then made a low, and justifiably long, bow.

Despite her tendency to glower, Queen Victoria was not by any means a "puritanical old she-dragon breathing fire and brimstone." Or so says Prince Charles, 27, defending his great-great-great-grandmum in next month's issue of the British literary magazine Books and Bookmen. The heir apparent claims that Victoria was greatly misunderstood because of her famous judgment: "We are not amused." Actually, she was a "charming character" who "adored" a good laugh, says the prince. He cites, for example, an encounter between the Queen and a Scotch preacher named James MacGregor. In a service for Victoria at Crathie Church near Balmoral Castle, MacGregor appealed to the Almighty to "send down his wisdom on the Queen's ministers--who sorely need it." The plea caused some commotion in the royal pew. Writes Historian Charles: "Queen Victoria went purple with suppressed laughter."

The artist was sitting in his tub enjoying a bath, recalls David Douglas Duncan, describing his first encounter with Pablo Picasso 20 years ago. Painter and photographer hit it off, and in the years that followed Duncan clicked off some 50,000 photos of the master and his work, and produced three volumes of Pi-cassiana. In celebration of Picasso's 95th birthday on Oct. 25, Duncan has now produced a fourth, titled The Silent Studio (Norton), which focuses on Picasso's art-filled French Riviera villa and on Jacqueline, his wife for a dozen years before his death in 1973. "Living with Picasso was like living with a blowtorch; he was a consuming flame," says Duncan. That quality, he says, still survived in the empty studio when he was taking photographs. "It seemed as if he was still there right at my shoulder, doing his work and in a rough sort of bass-baritone, needling me a little bit when I got in his way."

"The wolf man is dead!" So wrote Broadway Bard Damon Runyon on the front page of the now defunct New York Daily Mirror as he led a nationwide chorus of ghoulish jubilation over the 1936 electrocution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, convicted kidnaper of the infant son of Charles Lindbergh. Four decades later a forthcoming book, Scapegoat (Putnam), by Anthony Scaduto, a longtime crime reporter for the New York Post, argues that Hauptmann was innocent. Scaduto says he has unearthed police documents showing not only that someone other than Hauptmann cashed in most of the ransom certificates but that the authorities suppressed evidence supporting Hauptmann's alibi that he was at work as a carpenter throughout the day of the kidnaping. Once the spectacular trial was under way, Scaduto says, a number of witnesses distorted the evidence "for their own peculiar motives." Haupt-mann's widow Anna, now 78, added a melancholy judgment of her own: "I know my Richard couldn't do such a thing."

Another famous verdict of the 1930s was reversed--and officially so--when Alabama Governor George Wallace signed a full pardon for Clarence Norris, 64, believed to be the last survivor of the "Scottsboro Boys." Norris was 19 when he and eight other black youths were hauled off a freight train, prosecuted for raping two white women and quickly sentenced to death. It was a verdict that aroused worldwide protest and involved years of appeals. After five years on death row, Norris was reprieved, served another ten years in prison, won a parole, then fled to New York, where he now works as a city warehouseman. Said he of his lifelong ordeal: "The lesson to black people, to my children, to everybody, is that you should always fight for your rights, even if it kills you. They had said that I was a dog, but I stood up, and I said the truth. Somebody's got to do these things in life, that's all that life consists of."

The final score said Pittsburgh 45, Navy 0, but the game's most impressive number was 33 --the one printed on the football jersey of Pitt Tailback Tony Dorsett. With a fourth-quarter, 32-yd. touchdown run against the flagging midshipmen, Dorsett boosted his college rushing total to 5,206 yds., 29 yds. better than the record set by Ohio State's Archie Griffin just last year. In the process, Dorsett also became the first collegiate player ever to run for more than 1,000 yds. four years in a row and the first ever to carry the ball as many as 931 times. "I was the happiest person in the world," bubbled the Heisman Trophy candidate after besting Griffin's mark. "I'm hoping that record's going to last as long as I'm on earth." It might, especially since Dorsett has another four games in which to improve it.

Former Ohio Congressman Wayne Hays is in, despite his ruinous amour with a babblative blonde named Liz Ray. So too is Earl Butz, that scatological humorist who was forced from his job as Secretary of Agriculture --but not in time to prevent his inclusion in the Washington Green Book. Known officially as The Social List of Washington, D.C., 1977, the Kelly green volume has just appeared for the 46th year, providing a combination Who's Who and How To for Washington partygivers. Sample advice: "When there is doubt as to which of two people bears the higher rank, it is the part of wisdom never to invite them to a formal, seated dinner at the same time." President Gerald Rudolph Ford leads this year's edition, of course, followed by a legion of White House assistants, spear carriers and several hundred congressional personages. A February 1977 supplement is already in the works, however--just in case this month's election changes the capital cast.

It was an unsettling week indeed for the wives of Juan Domingo Peron, the late President of Argentina. For starters, Argentina's current President Jorge Rafael Videla ordered the well-embalmed remains of Juan's second wife, Evita, moved out of the presidential residence and into a family vault. Videla wanted to use the residence and found Evita's shrine a bit de trop. Then three days later a federal judge in Buenos Aires indicted Juan's third wife, Isabelita, for the misuse of public funds during her own 21-month tenure as President. Isabelita did recall stashing some cash in Spain and Switzerland before her overthrow last March, but she insisted that she "understood nothing about money" and pleaded innocent to the charges. She now faces trial, plus a chance of being removed from house arrest in her comfortable villa and into a common jail. That would suit the resort keepers near her home just fine, since the gun-carrying security men assigned to guard her seem to be making the tourists a trifle nervous.

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