By Claudia Wallis

Put John Belushi on a mountaintop, roll the cameras, and what will result: (a) Animal House on a Hill, (b) The Blues Brothers Camp Out or (c) Samurai Height Fever? Answer: none of the above. In Continental Divide, Belushi climbs into what he calls his first "realistic acting role," one that is "less of a cartoon than any I've done before." It takes him 14,000 ft. up in Colorado's Sangre de Cristo mountains, where he portrays a Mike Royko-like Chicago reporter who has raked so much local muck that his editors have decided to pack him off to the Rockies on a harmless little nature story. There are no racked-up police cars, no food fights, no mashing of beer cans. And no, Belushi does not fall off Purgatory Peak. He falls in love.

To Mikhail Baryshnikov the American Ballet Theater seemed "a beautiful Tiffany lamp with some parts missing" when he was named its artistic director in June 1979. Last week Misha allowed two of the more glittering panes to fall from the A.B.T. lamp. Celebrated Ballerina Gelsey Kirkland, 27, and fast-rising Principal Dancer Patrick Bissell, 23, were dismissed from the company, one day before the season's opener at Washington's Kennedy Center. The official reason: "gross breach of contract." The two had failed to appear for a dress rehearsal, explained Executive Director Herman Krawitz, and had been "chronically late--and absent--for rehearsals [for] 13 weeks." Friends of the brilliant but erratic Kirkland speculated that she might be distracted by a romance with Bissell. Others said she had never recovered from the breakup of her 1974 affair with Baryshnikov, 31, or at the very least had deep "artistic differences" with him. Whatever the reasons, ballerina and director were far from the harmony of past pas de deux. "Misha got tired of running a kindergarten," said one observer at A.B.T. Kirkland's booking agent, Alex Dube, conceded that the dancer's conduct was "unprofessional" but asked, "Is that news? She has canceled numerous performances before. But when she comes out onstage she is a miracle." Nevertheless, the miracle on opening night was Kirkland's replacement, Susan Jaffe, 18, who debuted with the company in a duet from Le Corsaire and won a chorus of raves.

Leonard Bernstein insisted that he was entirely too young for this sort of award. "What do they mean by 'lifetime achievement?' " asked the 62-year-old composer-conductor. "I'm just beginning." Onetime Stage Queen Lynn Fontanne had no such quibble; she turned 93 on the evening she joined Bernstein, Actor James Cagney, 81, Choreographer Agnes de Mille, 71, and Soprano Leontyne Price, 53, in receiving a coveted Kennedy Center honor for career achievement in the performing arts. At weekend-long festivities that included a musical tribute at the Kennedy Center, star-struck Washingtonians clustered around such visiting Hollywood idols as John Travolta and Lauren Bacall. But Jimmy Carter did what he could to maintain decorum. Said he: "Cagney and I agreed we would not exchange our Jimmy impressions."

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