By Richard Stengel

She is as ambitious, as coquettish, as headstrong as her childhood celluloid idol, Scarlett O'Hara. And when Governor John Y. Brown, 48, swept Phyllis George, 33, off her feet, he seemed as dashing and roguishly gallant as Rhett Butler. But now any similarity between Butler, that blockade-running profiteer, and Brown is frankly causing the Governor to give a damn. Over the past few years, the former owner of Kentucky Fried Chicken has apparently been withdrawing sacks of hundred dollar bills from his account at a bank in Miami, not far from his vacation home. His total haul: $1.3 million. A grand jury is now investigating whether the bank violated a federal requirement that all cash withdrawals above $10,000 be reported to the IRS. It was his money, of course, and Brown explains that "the poor old Governor" has "a fairly expensive wife."

After reviewing Vicki Morgan's tawdry yet strangely pathetic accounts of Alfred Bloomingdale's sexual depravity, Judge Christian E. Markey Jr. last week dismissed most of her multimillion-dollar palimony suit, asserting that the relationship between the millionaire and her was "no more than that of a wealthy, older, married paramour and a young well-paid mistress." Whether or not she was more than a mistress, he appears to have been the master. During sworn pretrial testimony, Morgan claimed that Bloomingdale would bind several women with his neckties, beat them with a belt and "stand there and watch the girls get on the floor and crawl ... he'd have these girls crawl on the floor, and he'd sit on their back and drool, okay?" The judge also dismissed Morgan's $5 million claim against Betsy Bloomingdale. Morgan's attorney will probably appeal. "It really is an ugly mess," said Morgan, "more than anyone will ever know."

He won fame on TV's Kung Fu as the ascetic Shaolin priest who only used his prodigious powers in self-defense. But David Carradine, 41, is now trying to block the release of his latest martial-arts movie, Lone Wolf, with a well-aimed legal kick to its producers' fiscal throat. Carradine agreed to play the heavy in the film on condition that 1) he would not kill the woman, in this case sultry, almond-eyed Barbara Carrera; 2) he would not die; and 3) he would not get licked in hand-to-hand combat with the film's "good guy," the bearded, karate-flick regular, Chuck Norris, 40. But after the final editing he was chopped down by Norris. So he sued to protect his reputation as a man "possessed of boundless courage, and physically and spiritually indomitable." Does he not know the teaching of Confucius: "He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good"?

There can be no higher calling even for an aerialist. To celebrate the resumption (after 41 years) of construction on the world's largest Gothic cathedral, St. John the Divine, that soaring seraph of acrobats Philippe Petit, 33, tiptoed to the church across a 250-ft. wire slung 15 stories above Manhattan. The inspiration, notes Dean James Parks Morton, came from an 18th century painting by Guardi depicting circus performers outside San Marco in Venice. Having an aerialist perform, says Morton, "is proof of faith, like nothing else." And he has that on the loftiest authority.

--By Richard Stengel

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