By Richard Stengel

Not so long ago he might have had a sticker plastered over his mouth that read PARENTAL GUIDANCE REQUIRED, but Richard Pryor, 43, the incendiary comic who in 1980 turned himself into a human torch while free-basing cocaine, is now host of a children's show called Pryor's Place, which debuts on CBS this Saturday morning. In a fantasy urban setting, the comedian will cavort with the Krofft puppets, tell stories about his own childhood, and impersonate several characters, including Chills, a hip saxophone player, and Carlotta, a savvy fortuneteller. The weekly half-hour may be a long way from the Sunset Strip, but it's not in Captain Kangaroo's neighborhood either.

Oh, Maaare! as Rhoda undoubtedly would have wailed with a mixture of pain, sympathy and gentle reproach. Mary Tyler Moore, 46, who chilled the same hearts in Ordinary People that she warmed on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, has joined the roster of celebrities (Johnny Cash, Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Mitchum, Liza Minnelli) who have checked into the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., for help with an alcohol problem. Moore, a diabetic since 1968, did so on the advice of doctors, who suggested that although she is not a heavy drinker she ought to halt even social drinking, which can be dangerous for diabetics. One of those concerned physicians was her husband of ten months, Robert Levine, 30, a cardiologist, who says, "I am very proud of her and applaud her for doing this." Moore, who now says she is "feeling wonderful," expects to be out and about in early October.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's (Can you see it coming?) Superman in a plane. Christopher Reeve, 32, who soared to fame as the Man of Steel, is starring next in The Aviator as a rugged, '20s mail pilot. His plane crashes, and Reeve is marooned on a mountain with the companion able Rosanna Arquette. Reeve, an experienced pilot who has soloed across the Atlantic, did all his own flying in the film, a claim he cannot make about his earlier aerial incarnation.

Alas, even the maestro could not keep harmony among his dissonant musicians. Zubin Mehta, 48, the Bombay-born conductor of the New York Philharmonic, had returned to his native land after an absence of 17 years. In New Delhi, the eleventh stop of the orchestra's eight-nation Asian tour, all seemed fine as two elephants tromboned a welcome, but then his musicians began raising a cacophony of complaints about the hotel accommodations. "Unbearable," screeched a violinist. "There are bugs in the bed," one musician whined. "And cockroaches," chimed in another. Mehta quieted the sour-note chorus by allowing a move to a more hospitable hostelry. In the end, though, the conductor heard the sweet sounds he had come for: the concert was greeted with thunderous applause.

--By Richard Stengel