At 93 Ibs. in her stocking feet, Ann-Margret is a piece of cake for Bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger, who weighs in at 215. In fact, both stars of Hal Needham's upcoming comedy western, The Villain, are trim and fit. Says Arnold: "Ann-Margret can run six miles without breathing hard." Only good form, of course, to hold the third bankable name in the cast up for praise, too. "Kirk Douglas is very muscular and lean and in great shape," judges Schwarzenegger. "I've never seen him step onto a horse, he jumps." Oh, and the horse! It's actually six look-alike horses who do different stunts, rolling over, sitting down and even kissing Kirk --all in fine fettle.
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For a decade he lived openly in a captain's paradise, spending each week with his London mistress and each weekend with his Parisian wife. Finally Sir James Goldsmith, 45, multimillionaire entrepreneur and press lord who controls France's L 'Express, put an end to the domestic balancing act. Having already divorced the former Ginette Lery in September, Sir Jimmy whisked Lady Annabel Birley off for a private wedding ceremony--in Paris of all places. When the couple left Goldsmith's Paris office, Daily Express Photographer Bill Lovelace snapped some pictures. Sir Jimmy ran at him "like a mad bull," grabbed his camera, then dragged Lovelace inside and tore ? out the film. Gossip columnists, the press lord groused later, "are diseases like the flu, and everyone is subject to them." Well, almost everyone.
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No singing the blues last week for Mabel Mercer or Alberta Hunter. The two were delighted with their portraits in "A Song I Can See: Great Women in Jazz," an exhibition of photographs by Barbara Bordnick at The Space gallery in Manhattan. Mercer, 78, still croons in cafes and listens to her old discs, though "only for correction. Never for pleasure." Hunter, 83, is back on the cafe circuit after having given up music 20 years ago to don a nurse's uniform. On Dec. 3, she takes on Washington at a Kennedy Center gala, and she knows her program already. No surprise: "I'll lay some blues on them."
The San Francisco Opera Medal was fashioned, quite appropriately, of Tiffany gold, in honor of Kurt Adler's 50 years in the opera business and 25 years as general director of the San Francisco company. And it came with a bonus: a benefit soiree at up to $500 a head, with a gaggle of golden-throated divas to sing his praises, among them Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Dorothy Kirsten, Bidu Sayao and Licia Albanese. Leontyne Price declared that her former mentor is still the "guiding figure" in her career. Also a tough perfectionist. "Just when you think Adler is safely tucked away in his office," she said, "he'll pop out from behind a bush and tell you your train is a foot too long."
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His lawyer pleaded for a slap-of-the-wrist sentence so that the sorrowful defendant would be free to stump on a high school lecture circuit preaching honesty in government. But U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Gasch was not persuaded. Result: the nation's senior black Congressman, Charles C. Diggs, 56, was hit with a three-year rap on 29 counts of fraud in a $60,000 kickback scheme that involved skimming the inflated salaries of his congressional office employees. Ironically, a convicted Diggs had just won re-election to Congress with a 4-to-l margin in his Detroit inner-city district. Mayor Coleman Young summed up voter sentiment: "I don't believe he did anything dishonest, or anything that is not a common practice throughout the Congress." Apparently of the same mind, the bullish Diggs has opted to take his seat in January while appealing his case, and has made only a token concession to the verdict in relinquishing two committee chairmanships. Unless his colleagues vote to expel him, he may in fact serve his loyal district behind bars.
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