Happy, Happy, Happy

Happy, Happy, HAPPY!

For those unjaded souls who like to celebrate New Year's Eve in style the ultimate in bibulous, bubbly bliss will be made possible this Dec. 31 by the su- personic Concorde. Bacchanals will be able to toast in 1977 at three strokes of midnight--in Paris, above the Atlantic and in Washington. They will get ready for their triple tipple by flying the Air France SST from Washington to Paris the night of Dec. 29. The celebration will begin with the first three courses of a New Year's Eve dinner at the Inter-Continental Hotel, followed by the first toast to la nouvelle annee at Charles de Gaulle Airport just before the Concorde takes off.

Now the fizz starts to whiz. Since the plane travels at 1,350 m.p.h., about 600 m.p.h. faster than the world turns below the flight, midnight will come again over the Atlantic with the passengers, as the New York packaging agent puts it delicately, "eleven miles high." Fortified with three more courses of dinner, the revelers will land in Washington (e.t.a.: 9:50 p.m.) and toddle over to the French embassy for the last three courses and a final salute to 1977. "It will be a first in the history of the world," say the promoters, "ranking with Lindbergh or Earhart." All for only $4,850, Alka-Seltzer not included.

Back in her scuffling days she did TV ads for soap, mouthwash and men's underwear. That was before Actress Andrea Marcovicci went legit, of course, first with a 2%-year run as lovable Dr. Betsy Chernak in the TV soap opera Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, and most recently as Woody Allen's morally upright friend in The Front. For all that, Marcovicci has been singing the blues lately--as a chanteuse at Reno Sweeney in Manhattan. "If I stick to singing, I won't go stir crazy waiting for another movie part," she says. Are her days as a TV hucksteress long gone then? "I wouldn't mind representing a product like Catherine Deneuve does," muses Andrea, considering the merits of Chanel No. 5. "That's not exactly chopped liver."

His necktie sported Democratic donkeys, and his step showed some of the old kick as former Vice President Hubert Humphrey checked out of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. Three and a half weeks after an operation to remove his cancerous bladder, Humphrey said goodbye to his nurse and a crowd of well-wishers, then set off for Washington, D.C., to await election results in his campaign for a fifth Senate term. "I've had enough tests to go through 44 universities," said the Minnesotan. As for his regimen as a convalescent, bubbled Hubert: "I'll be swimming and walking, and, God only knows, I'll be talking."

"He'd take me to the five-and-dime and buy me a ribbon for my hair or a plastic duck to sail in the bath. I limited my life to him." So says Meta Carpenter Wilde, 69, recalling her 18-year romance with Novelist William Faulkner. From the day they met in 1935, when she was a script girl and he an impoverished, hard-drinking writer trying to earn some money in the movies, the pair kept their passion one of Hollywood's quietest affairs. Now Meta is telling all, both in November's Los Angeles magazine and an upcoming book titled A Loving Gentleman. "He wanted me whenever I was willing to go with him to his hotel room," she remembers. "Bill kept hinting that one day he would be free to marry me. He put it in his letters every so often, just to keep me going." Instead of marriage, however, he offered bawdy love poems, erotic cartoons--and heart-wrenching returns to his wife and daughter in Mississippi. (Faulkner and Wife Estelle remained married from 1929 until his death 33 years later.) "The South ... was part of the rhythm of his life," says Meta. "He was really at his happiest raccoon or pig hunting with his cronies, the town blacksmith or the drugstore clerk."

In auditioning for the role of Amanda Prynne in the Middlebury College production of Private Lives, one coed had something of an edge. After all. Amanda Plummer had been named for Noel Coward's histrionic heroine 19 years earlier by Mother Tammy Grimes and Father Christopher Plummer. What is more, Tammy herself had won a 1970 Tony Award in the same role on Broadway. "I had seen my mum do the part many times, and I liked the way she did it," allowed Amanda, who invited her parents to Vermont to catch her college stage debut. Stage Mother Tammy gave her offspring a predictable rave review: "She had grace, coolness and vitality. I was most proud of her."

After five husbands and a few flirtations, Actress Elizabeth Taylor has managed to collect a nice little box of rocks. Among her favorite gems: the 69.42-carat Cartier diamond, the 33.10-carat Krupp diamond and the Peregrina pearl that once belonged to Mary Tudor. Soon she will be slipping her size 7 1/2finger into a new bauble, courtesy of her current fiance, John Warner. The ring, designed by Warner himself, features a red, white and blue motif made from a ruby, diamond and sapphire, and it has been likened to a miniature fireworks display. Chances are, the design has little to do with Liz's fiery temperament. Warner, after all, was head of the Bicentennial Administration.

"There are other things to do, and it would be rather selfish of me if I remained locked away here," says Britain's Prince Charles, offering some lofty motives for leaving the Royal Navy on Dec. 15 (after five years of service). Now the commanding officer of a 360-ton mine hunter named the H.M.S. Bronington, Charles will quit ruling the waves in six weeks to take charge of preparations for the Silver Jubilee, next year's celebration of Queen Elizabeth's 25th year on the throne. His leave-taking will mark the end of a not-so-bon voyage. "I have never actually been sick until I came to this ship," confesses the Prince. "She has given me some particularly nasty moments. It gives me nightmares thinking about them."

Charles de Gaulle liked to portray an image seven feet tall, the incarnation of France, flawless. But he was addicted to at least one small sin, according to former British Prime Minister Sir Harold Wilson. During a TV interview, Wilson recalled a visit with the French President back in the 1960s. When De Gaulle began talking about his country home at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, Wilson asked him what he did there during the quiet evenings. "I knew he read westerns," said Wilson, "but in addition to that, he said he played patience [soli-taire]. I asked him if he cheated if it wasn't turning out." De Gaulle's answer. "Yes, invariably."

She took a turn with former Ohio Congressman Wayne Hays because of his power "and because he was the sharpest dresser I ever saw," says Liz Ray, 33, onetime Playgirl of the Potomac. Now that Hays has been retired from power and Liz has become a Thespian of sorts, she has discovered someone new. He is Carl Stohn Jr., 55, a producer for the playhouse in St. Charles. Ill., where Ray is appearing in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? "I love everything about him," gushes Liz. "He's always directing me and teaching me, like My Fair Lady. I hope to have a long-time relationship with him and see what happens." Stohn, however, calls himself a dedicated bachelor and the reports of romance "one-sidedly true." Says he: "Actors are like children."

There's just no way to beat the devil, judging from the number of spook-and-demon movies now brewing in Hollywood. Not only will Actress Linda Blair soon make a spirited return in The Heretic--Exorcist II, but Producer Harvey Bernhard has agreed to work on three sequels to The Omen, his picture about a devilish four-year-old named Damien. The Omen has pulled $50 million into U.S. and Canadian box offices since its release, and so Bernhard plans to bring Damien back as a twelve-year-old, a young man and a Western leader who guides his people to Armageddon. "It's a natural development," says Bernhard. "Like Jesus, this guy just doesn't know how much power he has."

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