By E. Graydon Carter

Yes, that is Bianca Jagger, 35, next to Designer Halston at a tea ceremony in Kyoto, Japan. No, she is not suffering from disco pallor. The white-faced geisha look was part of the Oriental theme of Halston's 500-outfit, 30-person, 22-day, six-city fashion tour. When asked to include Peking and Shanghai in his travel plans, Halston, 48, designed a line of silky "Great Wall clothes." They proved popular with his Chinese hosts, but most still cling to the jacketed outfits pioneered by their own trend setter, Mao.

"I got these hips on Italian pasta, and now I'm working them off on an Italian bicycle," says Model Christie Brinkley, 26. Her swimsuit poster proves that less is more. For a Home Box Office special on modeling in Palm Springs, Calif., Christie posed for a few swimsuit shots to show how a model models. Months later, a pinup featuring those flawless flanks began appearing in stores. Miffed that the poster was released without her approval, Brinkley is suing the company that produced it. Besides, says she, "my cheeks make me seem like one of David Seville's chipmunks. I look like I'm storing up nuts for the winter."

The one-man Mount Rushmore is back for yet another encore. Bearded, and brandishing a cigar in the film The Legend of the Lone Ranger, Jason Robards, 58, plays President Ulysses S. Grant, who gets kidnaped by outlaws, then rescued by Kemo Sabe and his faithful Indian companion, Tonto. It is the actor's fourth term in a presidential part: he played Abraham Lincoln in Abe Lincoln in Illinois, a 1964 Hallmark Hall of Fame drama; the Nixonesque Richard Monckton in the 1977 NBC mini-series Washington: Behind Closed Doors; and more recently, the title role in F.D.R: The Last Year, a TV movie shown on NBC this year. That leaves 34 Chief Executives to go. Hi-ho, Silver! Getum up, Scout! Talent scout, that is.

It could not have been dubbed a sellout crowd, because the concert was free. But by any standards, Elton John's afternoon concert in Manhattan's Central Park, organized to benefit its "Keep It Green" program, was strictly S.R.O. The urban Woodstock drew 400,000 jeans-clad John fans and graying groupies, who blanketed the park's Great Lawn, a sprawling, 15.2-acre open field. Seated at an enormous white Yamaha and decorated in his studiously garish outfits--John, 33, looked as impish and outlandish as ever. Contact lenses may have replaced those preposterous peepers, but Captain Fantastic still knows how to stage a spectacle.

For Duke University President Terry Sanford, the adventure proved more downward-bound than anything else. Toughing it in the Oregon wilds with a blue-chip Outward Bound expedition organized by American Stock Exchange Chairman Arthur Levitt Jr., 49, for Amex board members and others (among them: retired Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, 59), Sanford was surprised to see some of the group's guides jump off a cliff into the Rogue River. Sanford, 63, who served in World War II as a paratrooper, shrugged, then followed, Butch Cassidy-style. His daredeviltry earned kudos from his companions, but left him with a cracked vertebra, torn back muscles and a corset for the pain. And just how high was that cliff? Says Sanford: "When I first told the story, it was 35 feet. Then I added five feet every time I told the story. When I got to 100, I started over."

On the Record

Ethel Kennedy, 52, toasting the engagement of her son Michael Kennedy, 22, to Vicki Gifford, 23, the daughter of ABC Sports Announcer Frank Gifford: "I don't feel I am losing a son; I feel I am gaining eight extra tickets for Monday Night Football."

Rory Flynn, 33, defending her father Errol against accusations that he was involved in duplicitous espionage activities during World War II: "With Daddy's lifestyle? He'd be the last person anyone would want for a spy."

--By E. Graydon Carter

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