On the Record

NBC Newsman John Chancellor is usually in the public eye with his co-anchor David Brinkley, but he gamely agreed to wing it with a macaw named Bob. The occasion was a fund-raising luncheon for the New York Zoological Society, which is dedicated to protecting endangered species and displaying animals in natural environments. Chancellor, a devotee of wildlife preservation, had no trouble with the boa constrictor and the tarantula that came to lunch. The macaw, however, was for the birds. "Neither one of us expected to have our picture taken together," said Chancellor. "He bit me, just to show who was boss."

Protesting university students, 100 strong, hurled eggs, bottles and epithets at the black limousine. British bobbies and U.S. Secret Service men punched, kicked and wrestled with demonstrators as the visitor scurried inside the Oxford Union Society hall. There, before a vastly more appreciative audience, Richard M. Nixon told 800 guests of Oxford University's prestigious debating society that the crowd outside made him feel "very much at home" and that "I have retired from politics, but I have not retired from life." Nixon addressed the society near the end of a week-long trip to France and England, his first overseas trip since 1976, when he visited China. When he appeared before the Oxford group, the ex-President said of Watergate: "I failed to handle a little thing, which became a big thing--and that colors everything else." He summed up to his young audience: "You'll be here in the year 2000, and we'll see how I'm regarded then."

Having played Dracula on Broadway, Actor Frank Langella is now in Cornwall, sinking his teeth into the same role for a film. Although the movie will have a different script, approach, director, cast and special effects, Langella wants to maintain his conception of the role of the sanguineous count. Dracula, he feels, has been misunderstood. "I don't play him as a hair-raising ghoul," says Langella. "He is a nobleman, an elegant man, with a very difficult problem."

Why is this man in the Fiji Islands? Because he owns one. "On the theory that everyone dreams of living on a Pacific island, we spent years looking for one to section into pieces of paradise," explains Sportsman-Publisher Malcolm Forbes, 59. The one he found was 3,000-acre Laucala. But that was in 1972, and since then Forbes has given up his resort idea. Last week, all decked out in lei and tropical duds, he teamed up with Fijian Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara to cut ribbons on some new projects that have to do with raising coconuts and corn and promoting sport fishing.

CRUEL WORLD read the sign on George Lee ("Sparky") Anderson's wall. It was just a joke until last week, when Anderson was summarily fired from his job of nine seasons as manager of the Cincinnati Reds. Anderson, 44, the most successful major league manager of the decade, led his team to four pennants and two World Series victories (1975 and 1976). But for the past two seasons the Reds have finished behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West. "We are determined to set a higher standard," said Reds President Dick Wagner in explanation of the firing. Translation: second place just isn't good enough. "You could've knocked me down with a feather when I found out," said Anderson. No translation needed.

"It's not a sad play. It's a play of the spirit," says Actor Eli Wallach of The Diary of Anne Frank. In an off-Broadway production opening Dec. 28, Wallach plays the father of the Jewish family that hides from the Nazis in an Amsterdam warehouse for 25 months during World War II. The mother is Anne Jackson, Wallach's real-life wife, and the Frank daughters are played by Wallachs as well. "You're comfortable with your own family, so it's easier," says Katherine, 20, who hopes for a career as a cafe chanteuse and plays Margot. "But there are cons. Your mother is always making sure you had lunch," adds Roberta, 23, a veteran of eight years on stage and screen, who plays Anne. How do the senior Wallachs feel about the experience? "You're supercritical. It's like teaching your wife to drive," says Eli. As for his wife, she is delighted to be performing a role onstage that her daughters insist she has perfected offstage. "At last, I get to play the Jewish mother," says Anne, an Irish Catholic.

As Britons watch a seven-part series titled Edward and Mrs. Simpson on the telly, the lady herself lies ailing and aggrieved in her Paris villa. The Duchess of Windsor, now 82, is said to feel that the show portrays her as the future King's "mistress" and a "cheap adventuress." Comes the word from her lawyer, Suzanne Blum: "She was the reluctant partner. The King did not want a mistress, and if he had he would not have abdicated. He wanted a wife and the support of one woman for the rest of his life." To prove it, the former Wallis Warfield Simpson has announced her intention to publish a packet of several dozen love letters. The billets-doux, penned by the couple before their marriage, were originally to have been kept secret until after the duchess's death.

Emerald City it wasn't, but the chandeliered ballroom of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills held treasures of its own last week. Up for auction were 423 possessions of the late Judy Garland. Among the items on the block: Garland's copy of the musical arrangement of Over the Rainbow, a pair of loaded dice given to her by Humphrey Bogart (purchased by Actress Lily Tomlin for $1,200), Judy's The Wizard of Oz scrapbook, and the beaded silk jacket she wore at Carnegie Hall. The highest sum --$60,000--was shelled out for Garland's 1953 black Mercedes-Benz 3005 coupe. Total take: $250,000. Would the star herself have approved? Says Sid Luft, Garland's third husband and the initiator of the auction: "Judy would have loved the production, the hoopla and the people."

"I hope in the year 2000 women still wear clothes like this," says Actress Carol Lynley about her boudoir garb. Alas, they don't, at least in Lynley's latest film, The Shape of Things to Come, based on H.G. Wells' science-fiction thriller. When Lynley, 36, arrived on the set, she learned that her costume was to be "a unisex Mao outfit." Nevertheless, she was cheered by her role as Niki, ruler of a planet named Delta III. "I'm called 'Governor,' not 'Governess' of the planet," says Lynley matter-of-factly. "Apparently there is no delineation of sex in the future."

John Cheever, author (Falconer, The Stories of John Cheever), speaking in Boston: "All literary men are Red Sox fans. To be a Yankee fan in literary society is to endanger your life."

Nancy Landon Kassebaum, newly elected Republican Senator from Kansas, on her father Alfred Landon, presidential candidate in 1936: "For someone who loves to give advice, he stayed out of it [Kassebaum's campaign] pretty well."

Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nobel-prizewinning author: "The truth is if Tolstoy would live across the street, I wouldn't go to see him. I would rather read what he writes."

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