Somehow, the old kitsch was missing. Oh, Chevy Chase took a dive--and i a giant envelope from a hairy Kongian hand. Marty Feldman smashed a statuette to smithereens. Richard Pryor yelled, "Hey, everybody in Peoria, it's me." But basically, to the chagrin of camp followers everywhere, they played it straight, even to the point of inviting Norman Mailer and Lillian Hellman to give awards. Missing were Bob Hope, John Wayne and most of Old Hollywood; New Hollywood (whose spokesperson increasingly seems to be Jane Fonda) was so in evidence that even onetime McGovernite Warren Beatty observed that somebody ought to put in a good word for Ronald Reagan. All this earnestness was the work of Director William Friedkin, producer of the 49th Academy Awards presentation, who had ruled out all the traditional stuff that he felt had made filmdom's annual bash "tacky, like some Roman event." Beatrice Straight won Best Supporting Actress for her brief, intense role as a spurned wife in Network; Jason Robards got Best Supporting Actor for his crusty, sleeves-up portrayal of Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee in All the President's Men.

Best actress went to Faye Dunaway as the bitchy-pushy programming V.P. in Network; her loony anchorman co-star Peter Finch, who died last January, was named Best Actor. Rocky, Sylvester ("Sly") Stallone's uplift tale about the little-known heavyweight who could, won Best Picture.

After a final song by Ann-Margret --whom one wag nominated for a special award, "Best Body on an Adult" --the winners and losers moved on to the Beverly Hilton for some salmon mousse and fillet. Just as they were sitting down in their gowns and tuxedos, an equally elegant bunch was drifting out of Manhattan's Tavern on the Green, where Superagent Irving ("Swifty") Lazar had invited 200 of his closest friends--including Bianco Jagger, Truman Capote, Polly Bergen, Yul Brynner, Walter Cronkite and Lee Radziwill --to help him celebrate his 70th birthday and to watch the awards on ten television screens. But, as they used to say in Brooklyn, wait'll next year and the 50th.

Watch out, Lauren Hutton and Margaux Hemingway: here comes another high-priced face. Victoria Fyodorova, the Soviet actress who came to the U.S. in 1975 in search of her long-lost American father, retired Rear Admiral Jack Tate, and soon married an airline pilot, has signed a five-year contract to advertise cosmetics put out by Alexandra de Markoff, a division of Lanvin. The company reckoned that her name and chiseled cheekbones fit the de Markoff image. Victoria, who has caught on i quickly to the ways of the consumer society, claims a lifelong interest in cosmetics. "As a child, I would make up my dolls, but they always came out looking terrible." Will her personality come across, as she hopes, in the new de Markoff campaign? "I don't want people to say, 'Well, she's pretty, but she's dull.' " Just say she's prospering.

After all those years of flinging rich Gallic dishes about on TV, America's premier French chef, Julia Child, has become a culinary turncoat. In her first new public broadcasting series since 1972, she will concentrate on, of all things, American cuisine. Says Julia, 64: "It's time we branched out and did something different." In the 13-installment program, which she will begin shooting in September, Julia will whip up entire meals instead of single dishes, aiming also to "get out of the kindergarten. We don't want to show how to chop onions. This will be sort of an advanced thing for people who like to cook." Some possibilities for Julia's new menu: New England boiled beef and cabbage, Pedernales chili and, of course, grits.

Everybody loves a clown, particularly a princess. So Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco graced a three-ringside seat at the opening night of the Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Manhattan last week. The official reason for her presence in New York was the christening of a new, 750-passenger luxury liner, the Cunard Princess. Grace, 47, hurled the traditional bottle of bubbly with impressive brio. "Wonderful arm," quipped New York

Mayor Abraham Beame, on hand for the ceremonies. "She'd be a great asset to the Yanks or the Mets."

French Choreographer Maurice Bejart had a devil of a time casting his ballet rendition of Goethe's Faust. Who could play the aging hero, a scholar struggling to recapture his youth by bargaining with Mephistopheles? "There aren't many 50-year-old male dancers left," explains Bejart, who happens to be exactly 50. So, even though he hadn't danced onstage in nine years, Bejart decided that in the Broadway premiere of his Notre Faust, he himself would play the title role and Mephistopheles as well. Before his debut in the relentlessly athletic work, which is set to music from Bach's Mass in B-minor with frequent explosions of Argentine tango, Bejart observed: Faust is not just a role, "it's a mid-life crisis. You want to live again. You want to be young again."

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