By E. Graydon Carter

"I have divorced Martin Scorsese because he wanted me to spend my life between the cookstove and the kids," says Model Isabella Rossellini, 30, daughter of Ingrid Bergman and Italian Film Director Roberto Rossellini. Exit American film director nine years her senior. Enter American Model Jon Weidermann, five years younger than she. "With my new husband it is different," says Rossellini of Weidermann, whom she last week admitted to having quietly married in February. "I will have the chance of becoming someone apart from our life together." Isabella has both her mother's smoky good looks and a predilection for starting an early family (she and Weidermann expect their first child in July). Rossellini's parents only got around to a wedding four months after her brother was born.

Apart from George Bernard Shaw himself, few British stage veterans have done as much to promote the works of the white-bearded comedic master as Rex Harrison. He starred in the 1941 film version of Major Barbara, then played Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, the musical adaptation of Pygmalion. Now Harrison is again setting the Shavian standard, this time with Diana Rigg, 44, and a thoroughly splendid cast in a production of Heartbreak House, which opened triumphantly at the Haymarket Theater in London's West End last week. For his role as the 88-year-old Captain Shotover, Harrison, only 75, managed to age himself by growing his own set of Shotover whiskers. Of course in the play, the ripe old captain still gets the girl. But then, Sexy Rexy, now in his sixth marriage, practically always has.

The photo album for the first year alone threatens to be a three-volume work, but the kid could probably cause shutter flutter no matter who his parents were. At Kensington Palace, nine-month-old Prince William the Charmer sat not entirely still for just one more photo session. The young royal intermittently bared his six new teeth, chewed on a daffodil, and hugged his stuffed koala, perhaps in anticipation of the family's upcoming tour of Australia and New Zealand. Breaking with a tradition that calls for heirs to be left safe at home while their parents travel, Prince Charles, 34, and Diana, Princess of Wales, 21, are taking the baby with them. But while they pursue their six-week, 45,000-mile itinerary, William will be billeted at Woomargama, a rented six-bedroom estate set on 4,000 acres in the Australian province of New South Wales.

"I wonder how well the country understands the pessimism that broods over Washington these days," wrote Richard L. Strout 40 years ago this month in his first "TRB" column for the New Republic. The message of those words remains contemporary, as does the messenger, who turned 85 last week and announced that he would soon submit his last TRB column (which, according to New Republic lore, got its name when an editor of the magazine transposed the letters of Brooklyn Rapid Transit while delivering an early column to the printers by subway). Others wrote the column before him, but since 1943 Strout's TRB has been a steady, unstrident voice of New Deal liberalism that has sent conservative economists, gun lobbyists and segregationists scurrying for cover. "I hate to give it up," says Strout, "but I just want a little freedom and a chance to simplify my life." The essayist's concept of octogenarian simplicity means devoting more attention to his full-time job for the past 62 years, that of a Washington-based reporter for the Christian Science Monitor. "I'm going to miss it," he says of his opinion outlet. "I've been sort of laying down the law for 40 years. It's hard to un-pundit yourself."

--By E. Graydon Carter

On the Record

Charlie Gehringer, 79, Detroit Tiger who retired in 1942 to start an automobile parts firm: "Us ballplayers do things backwards. First we play, then we retire and go to work."

Joan Claybrook, former U.S. highway safety chief, on the 130 auto deaths that occur daily in the U.S.: "These casualties exceed those of a major airline crash every day, 365 days a year. Would the Administration tolerate such airplane disasters? Not likely." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.