PEOPLE

By Belinda Luscombe

IT TAKES A CONGRESS ...

ELLEN MORGAN, the subject of one of the ugliest and most controversial custody battles ever to pass through American courts, not to mention several books and a movie, may be able to return to the U.S. with her mother under unusual legislation passed in Congress last week. ELIZABETH MORGAN went to prison for two years rather than allow her daughter, then called Hilary Foretich, to visit her father Eric Foretich, who Elizabeth claims molested Ellen. He denies the claim. For the past seven years mother and daughter have been living in New Zealand. The tailor-made legislation will mean that Foretich won't be allowed to see Ellen without her consent. His lawyer says the new law is unconstitutional and he will challenge it in federal court.

SEEN & HEARD

Although she has not generally promoted her above-the-collar assets in the past, Pamela Lee, the Baywatch star and former Playboy model, is negotiating a deal to write a book. It's probably going to be co-written by friendly-biographer-to-the-stars Todd Gold, but, says Lee's publicist, it won't be an autobiography. A surf-rescue manual, perhaps?

Mark Helprin, novelist and occasional Dole speechwriter, maintains he's no babe magnet. That, however, hasn't stopped a love-hungry soul from posing as him in personal ads, according to the New York Observer. Helprin, who's married (and something of a practical joker), can't understand why he was chosen. "If he looks like me," he says, "I understand why he's having trouble."

HASTA LA SANTA

"Everyone has more than just one side. I have a serious side, and I have a funny bone in me," says ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER of his decision to keep making a comedy every other movie, despite the fact that his last, Junior, was, ahem, terminated quickly. "We learned that one cannot turn 180[degrees] away from what people like to see you as," says the star philosophically. His next venture into the world of yuks is Jingle All the Way, in which he plays a harried father trying to find the season's most popular toy for his son. It's a situation that Schwarzenegger, who has three kids, knows personally. "It doesn't matter how rich or powerful you are. If the toy is out, it's out," he says. "When I read the script, I thought, 'This is like a documentary.'"

A GIFT FROM AN ABSENT FATHER

ORSON WELLES, director, writer, actor and...children's book illustrator? For Christmas 1956, 12-year-old REBECCA WELLES, Orson's daughter by Rita Hayworth, got a picture book about the festival of Les Bravades in St. Tropez, written and illustrated by her dad. "It was a wonderful gift, because I wasn't living with him at the time, and it was so unique and personal," says Rebecca. She sold the book in 1990, "because I thought the world should see it." Bart Rosenblatt and Al Corley (also known as the first Steven Carrington on Dynasty), beat out Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, among others, for the rights, and the book will be published in time for Christmas. Orson Welles, who studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, wrote and illustrated the story using India ink, ballpoint, gouache, watercolor and typewriter, and included such cinematic scenes as Saint Tropez's headless body drifting onto the shores of the city. "I've seen a lot of fetes, fiestas and festivals, every sort and variety of saints-day high-jinks all over the world," he wrote, "but never anything to equal the 'Bravades' of St. Tropez."