Such a furor in the White House. Presidential aides crowding into the Cabinet Room, a congressional delegation led by House Speaker Tip O'Neill himself. Iran? Afghanistan? Not at all. A "photo opportunity" with the chairperson of the National Alliance for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse--none other than Sophia Loren, in oversize sunglasses and simple red dress. Said she: "We need help, a lot of help, to awaken the world's consciousness to this sordid and persistent crime." Responded Jimmy Carter, as all those against child abuse crowded around: "One of the most beautiful chairpersons that I have ever had in the White House."

Holy Moses, what an all-star cast that is in the upcoming Wholly Moses, a desanctified recast of the biblical story. The premise of the movie is that a second baby, Herschel, was set adrift on the Nile at the same time as Moses. Never mind the hieroglyphic plot; just consider a cast that includes John Houseman, Madeline Kahn, John Ritter, Laraine Newman, James Coco, Jack Gilford, Dom DeLuise and Jack Albertson, along with Richard Pryor in a robes-and-rigamarole cameo as the pharaoh who puts Herschel down. Pryor became ill on the set, and no wonder. Maybe even the actors don't want to look at this movie's bullrushes.

The color scheme of the Fledermaus ball at Boston's stately Copley Plaza was black and white, but the 400 guests were blue. For the affair marked Bubbles' Beantown finale, the last Boston appearance for Soprano Beverly Sills, who had just sung Rosalinda in the Strauss opera. Sills' white dress balanced Director Sarah Caldwell's black gown, but not Caldwell's mood as she pooh-poohed the notion that Sills would be happy as non-performing director of the New York City Opera. Predicted Caldwell: "Your voice has a voice of its own. You'll be working in the kitchen and suddenly you'll hear singing. You'll try to escape to the shower. More singing. And in the middle of the night you'll hear a voice--trills, roulades, cadenzas." Caldwell's antidote: an open-ended invitation to Sills to sing any of the roles she always meant to sing, but never did.

Ah, my dears, how William Claude Dukenfield would have chuckled over the irony surrounding his 100th birthday. To mark the date, the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp honoring the Philadelphia-born comic who soared to film fame and immortality as W.C. Fields. The postmen forgot that Fields, so pinchpenny that he could name every bank in which he had an account and estimate the interest due, had willed not only his money but his name--and the attendant publicity value--to his heirs. Thus, to print the Fields stamp, the U.S. had to pay a royalty of $2,023. To the bureaucrat who overlooked Fields' foxy financial arrangement: a week's vacation in Philadelphia.

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