By Claudia Wallis

"Well, it's about time," Katharine Hepburn told Henry Fonda, upon meeting him last summer to film On Golden Pond. Despite nearly a century of cinema experience between them, Hepburn, 71, and Fonda, 75, had never collaborated before. Now, says Fonda, "Katharine is one of my favorite leading ladies. Her instincts are perfect." But not according to veteran Critic Helen Lawrenson. In an acid-etched piece in Dial magazine, Lawrenson dismisses the notion that Katharine is great as "twaddle." Hepburn's 1967 and '68 Oscars, says Lawrenson, "must have been for longevity." Kate's chief assets, she continues, are "photogenic bone structure, approximately two facial expressions" and a voice as "implacable as a dental drill." This, retorts Fonda, "is a crock," but Hepburn remains unperturbed. "I haven't read it. I only want to hear lovely things."

She was found last September in a Ft. Lauderdale park, naked, malnourished--and not knowing who she was. Florida doctors have since restored her health, but not her memory. The attractive, obviously well-educated brunet is known to herself only as Jane Doe. No identifying marks are on her body. No regional accent distinguishes her speech. Her fingerprints are not on record. So Jane went on national TV in an effort to find people "who know me better than I know myself." Her nervous appeal, on Good Morning America, brought more than 500 inquiries to the Ft. Lauderdale police department from families searching for missing relatives. At week's end, detectives were pursuing a handful of leads.

Baring her soul was just a first step for Rita Jenrette, 31, estranged wife of ex-Congressman and convicted Abscam influence peddler John Jenrette, 44. Last December, Rita shocked Washington and her own husband by publishing a "diary" detailing the drinking, mating and drug-taking habits of Congress. Now, in the April Playboy, she bares her corporeal self. Those who bother to read the text will learn that Rita considers the ten-page color spread "my way of purging the last political demons from my life." Rita's most titillating revelation: during one late-night House session John "led me into the shadows [of the U.S. Capitol] and we made love on the marble steps that overlook the monuments." Knowing that his wife was telling all in Playboy, Jenrette broke the story first, noting: "It's something I'd always wanted to do."

After Bryan Organ's portrait of Princess Margaret was unveiled in 1970, the artist "awoke to the most horrific morning of my life." One critic insisted that Organ, 45, "must have had a migraine" while painting it; others were even less kind. The Royal Family evidently did not concur, for they agreed to have Organ do the first official portrait of Prince Charles, 32. The completed work was hung in the National Portrait Gallery earlier this month, and reaction was tepid. Said one critic: "No one could possibly enthuse about it." What did enthuse just about everyone, however, was the latest chapter in another royal matter--whether Charlie will finally settle down and wed the fair Lady Diana Spencer, 19. Last week's installment was a Daily Mirror centerfold that reported a Milquetoast proposal from Charles: "If I were to ask you, do you think it would be possible?" and a decidedly less ambiguous ultimatum from the Queen: "Marry her by this summer or not at all."

--By Claudia Wallis

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