People

By Michele Orecklin

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Who needs free alarm clocks and umbrellas? To spike moribund magazine sales, it seems, nothing works better than hiring a new reporter--particularly one with an international following and a Nobel Prize. That at least has been the experience of Cambio, a Colombian newsweekly whose newsstand sales have doubled since novelist GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ bought the flagging magazine and joined its reporting staff. Undercover assignments are out of the question, but the author, who worked at a newspaper before becoming a novelist, insists on doing his own legwork and recently covered peace talks between the government and rebels. "Journalism is the only trade I like," he told the New York Times. Easy for him to say. World leaders take his calls, and he already has a book deal.

HALLE DREAMS OF DOROTHY

"I've been a crackhead and a glamour girl," says HALLE BERRY, "but never before both at the same time." Such are the rewards of portraying DOROTHY DANDRIDGE, inset, the ravishing but doomed actress who died of an overdose in 1965 at the age of 41. Berry will play Dandridge, the first black woman nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, in an upcoming HBO film. "I understand the struggle of a black actress wanting to do so much but having so many limitations," she says. Berry won the role, coveted by such stars as Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson, by upping the stakes. "I produced it," she says. "If I'm the producer, I get the part."

A FAMILY TREE'S TWISTED ROOTS

If you think your family holidays are tense, be grateful you're not a member of the Redgrave clan. Last Thanksgiving, while Oscar nominee LYNN REDGRAVE prepared the turkey for a houseful of guests, her manager and husband of 32 years JOHN CLARK decided to break some rather uncelebratory news. It seems that eight years earlier Clark had an affair with his personal assistant, Nicolette. The tryst produced a son, whose paternity remained secret. Then Nicolette got married...to Redgrave and Clark's son Ben, who soon learned he had become his half-brother's stepfather. Ben and Nicolette eventually split, and Ben insisted that Clark fess up to Redgrave. Believing Redgrave had sufficiently recovered from the shock and apparently taken with the act of truth telling, Clark then revealed the story to the National Enquirer. In the article, which appears this week, Clark said, "I hope we can get past this...I think we can." Apparently Redgrave thinks not. Last week she filed for divorce.