Casting about for a regal type for a walk-on part in the film version of the famed Swedish fairy tale The Wonderful Adventures oj Nils, the producers gave the royal palace a "call. The scene required a noble-looking gentleman to walk through his chamber onto a balcony and peer at a flock of wild geese flying overhead, astride one of which is a ten-year-old boy, Nils. Most of the scene was shot from a hovering helicopter and two time-consuming retakes were needed. Patiently doing his bit: good old (79) King Gustav VI Adolph of Sweden. sb sb sb The cornerstone for the new Wigan Girls High School was all inscribed: "Laid by the Rt. Hon. Hugh Gaitskell, A.D. 1962." But just a few hours before the Opposition Labor Party leader was to come up from London to do the honors, he learned that the school had become involved in a labor argument and that five workers had been fired. Gaitskell refused to show up at the ceremony. "I think," he huffed, "that it would have been most unwise for me to have been involved in this kind of dispute." Responded a disgruntled school official, after the ceremony was called off and the stone put in storage: "It's not much good to us now. We might lay it face downward and use it as part of the floor." sb sb sb Raptly gazing at herself on screen, Brigitte Bardot, 27, liked what she saw almost as much as the Paris critics. Her latest flick, Le Repos du Guerrier (The Warrior's Rest), directed by ex-Husband Roger Vadim, was lavishly lauded as her best bedtime story to date. To celebrate, she and her constant consort, Actor Sami Frey, 27, buzzed off to a Right Bank bistro to nuzzle the night away, touching off a spate of speculation in the Parisian press that Brigitte might, for Sami, convert to Judaism. sb sb sb As Russian Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, 52, told it to a select little clique gathered to watch the Bolshoi Ballet troupe at the Metropolitan Opera House in Manhattan, his wife, Irina, is an in curable shutterbug, with a passion for sunsets. When she goes back to Russia she will have snapped sunsets in New York, sunsets in Chicago, sunsets in Los Angeles, sunsets in every U.S. city she has visited. Cracked one of the guests in the diamond horseshoe circle, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Adlai Stevenson: "The pictures of dying America, I suppose." sb sb sb "There is beauty even in explosions," intoned flamboyant Jewelry Designer Roger King, 26, whose flashy $3,400 brooch suggesting an A-bomb blast (mushrooms of diamonds rising from a ruby earth) won Britain's "Jewel of the Year" award. Then glaring out at of the the audience in a posh London showroom where his nuclear nugget was on display, King dropped another wee bomb by deploring "the tendency of upper-class women to wear dreary strands of pearls all the time." Totally unruffled was the conservatively dressed, pearl-wearing woman at whom his remarks were aimed: Lady Dorothy Macmillan, wife of the Prime Minister, who once told a reporter, "I regard clothes as my husband regards food -- necessary but not to be discussed." Said Lady Dorothy of King: "Pearls go with a lot of things, and I haven't got all that much jewelry anyway."

His first $75 million design for a National Cultural Center was given short shrift as "too grandiose," so Architect Edward Durell Stone, 60, went back to the drawing board to take a narrower view. Unveiled at a ceremony at Newport. R.I.. the model of his second effort, a $30 million job with white marble facade, three huge halls with a seating capacity of nearly 7,000, and a roof garden with two restaurants, won high praise from Jacqueline Kennedy, honorary co-chairman with Mamie Eisenhower of the fund drive to bring a first permanent home for the performing arts to the nation's capital. To entertain the clutch of millionaires at the proceedings was triple-tongued Comedian Danny Kaye, who convulsed the crowd with a bashful bow to Jackie and then, more seriously, thanked the First Lady for "making writers, actors and musicians feel they are ten feet tall." sb sb sb

Anyone with a capitalistic name like Ford might have expected it. Having finished a new film on the Riviera, Cinemactor Glenn Ford, 46, decided on a jaunt to East Berlin for a "look at Communism." Crossing over at Checkpoint Charlie, the actor was detained for the usual currency check, told to take all the money from his pockets and count it out on a table. Out came bill after bill--$1,000 in all. "Aha," said the bug-eyed Vopo, "so you are the man who makes the motor cars." "Oh no," said Ford, "not that Ford." He added: "Pretty soon they had a dozen guards standing there. None of them would believe me. Finally I admitted that I was Henry Ford. That made them happy that they had been right all along, and they let me go." sbsbsb Her 4-ft. brunette tresses done up in a "ladylike" bun to support her titleholder's tiara, Miss America of 1963, Jacquelyn Jeanne Mayer, 20, flashed a dimpled smile for the folks back in Sandusky, Ohio, the morning after that last grueling strut across the stage at Atlantic City. The course to the crown was not easy, Jackie admitted. Back in high school she was a 150-lb. fatty. But four years of saying no to such favorite foods as chocolate icebox cake had slimmed her down to a perfect combination: 36-22-36 and 115 Ibs.

Arthritic Dame Sybil of Sank

Banned cars from her island so stark, But her son-in-law Malcolm, Without a "you're welcome," Swiped her power wheelchair for a lark.

Young Malcolm was levied two quid For the terrible thing that he did, But one M.P.'s quibble Was "What's good for Dame Sybil Must be good for each Sark invalid." Dame Sybil disdained his appeals, Only she could have motorized wheels. Her parliament said Sure To her droit du seigneur, No matter how other folk feels. sbsbsb With classic British nonchalance. Actor James Mason, 53. and his estranged wife Pamela, 44, launched a laconic legal battle in a Santa Monica court to divvy up the spoils of their marriage. Pamela demanded an allowance of $14,165 a month alimony and child support for the couple's precocious daughter Portland, 13, and son Alexander, 6; Mason agreed to shell out a temporary $7.000. Even with all that dough at stake, it was stiff upper lips all round. As the hearing was going on. Pamela was charmingly interviewing James on a pretaped TV show. "One should be able to talk to someone to whom one has been married for 22 years," sniffed Pamela. Added James: "We're just plain folks, me and my family." sbsbsb

A few words of financial wisdom from multimillionaire Arkansas Farmer Winthrop Rockefeller, 50, uttered to the London press on how to watch the dimes in hopes that the dollars will take care of themselves: "Never overtip."

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The pack of eight Alsatian hounds that guard the 1,000-acre Sutton Place estate near London of Last Billionaire Jean Paul Getty, 69. normally content themselves with 3 Ibs. of horsemeat apiece each day. spiced with an occasional hunk of prowler. Notices about the property warn: "Danger. Guard Dog--Keep Away. This dog is trained to treat all strangers as enemies. Do not touch." All of which is unsettling enough without one of Getty's pets hopping the fence into someone else's land. As Getty and a few friends were out for a stroll, one of the dogs, named Max, took off after a calf grazing in the field of Farmer A. H. Tilley, grabbed the animal by the throat and took a hefty bite. Said Getty, fined $14 for permitting his hound to "worry a calf": "Max always was a bit of a hunter."

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