It looked like a revival of The Green Pastures. Or maybe a toga-clad troupe whooping it up in ancient Rome. But all those friends, Romans, and countrymen turned out to be simply the Order of the Biltmore Bath, gathered in Manhattan for a 75th-birthday celebration honoring James Aloysius Farley, grand old man of the Democratic Party and the Coca-Cola Co. Politically, says Farley, he is "not very active because I'm not invited to be." He nonetheless keeps in fighting trim with weekly sessions in a steam-filled room, "the one place where I can relax." Among the seminude supporters sweating it out with Big Jim were Merchant Bernard F. Gimbel, 78, and onetime Heavyweight Champ Gene Tunney, 66, who read a poem--presumably in dank verse--titled Ode to a Bouncing Biltmore Bath Baby.

The career of Brigitte Bardot, 28, began to look more and more like a Hall of Mirrors. Her new vehicle, Contempt, is all about a film troupe shooting a movie in Italy--and there she was in Rome, inspiring those shutterbug paparazzi to ruses yet untried. One even hired a helicopter to map aerial views of her epic epidermis; another, on location, succeeded only in scaring Bardot and the boy friend, French Actor Sami Frey, out of a bush. Well, the paparazzi might enjoy her, but many Italians decided that Brigitte was not their piece of pasta. Said Rome's II Messaggero: "One of the least sexy women we have ever seen."

Near the new Athens Hilton stands an 11-ft. bronze replica of Harry S. Truman, 79, commemorating U.S. aid during Greece's Communist troubles of 1947. But some Greek critics found their latest art treasure "in bad taste."

Why Truman, said one, "when statues of great men of Athens like Pericles are still missing?" Out in Independence, Mo., Harry seemed to agree: "I have never been in favor of erecting statues of people still alive. I told them that when they started this thing--you never know when you'll have to tear it down."

"Boy, this is the most!" squealed Toni Ann LeVier, 18, whipping a Lockheed TF-104G Super Starfighter through the supersonic corridor near Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., at twice the speed of sound. Toni, a Pasadena high school senior and very likely the world's fastest teenager, held a pace of 1,325-1,350 m.p.h., with Dad as her copilot--and Dad is Supersonic Flight Pioneer A. W. ("Tony") LeVier, 50, now Lockheed-California's director of flying operations. With another father-daughter stunt in the offing, a cross-country flight to Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Toni nevertheless talks like a girl whose aims are thoroughly down-to-earth. "I want to get my private pilot's license," says she, "but I think I'd rather be a mother than a jet pilot."

Three candy golf balls were teed on a cake for Bob Hope, turning 60 at a family party in his California home. "Hard to believe," groaned Bob. "I didn't believe it myself until I heard about it." And Hope heard about it plenty, notably from a host of friends including Hedda Hopper, who advised: "Don't worry about being 60; I'm still wearing hats that old."

Jaunty as ever, up from Flat Rock, N.C., came Poet Carl Sandburg, 85, to recite Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait with Andre Kostelanetz and the

New York Philharmonic. After a rehearsal in Manhattan, Wife Lillian wanted to know what he had done with his lower incisors. "I couldn't find them," quoth Sandburg. "Anyway, they hurt." But the missing teeth soon turned up in his lady's handbag, and Sandburg talked freely. At fourscore and five years, says he, "I don't go around telling people how to live long. My advice reduces itself to this: watch out about stumbling into a coal hole, and--it's always safer to walk upstairs than down."

The Los Angeles Angels' "live it up" Pitcher Bo Belinsky, 26--with a record of 17 losses in his last 22 games--last week was ordered to join the team's Hawaiian farm club. Clearly skeptical about his chance to contribute to the delinquency of the Minors, Bo declared, "I'm not gonna go." When the L.A. management cut off his $15,000 salary, Bo was literally disengaged--except to his fiancee, a grand-slam blonde known around Hollywood as Mamie Van Doren, 30. What next? "Well, there are a few movies coming up," says the handsome moundsman, "and what the hell, everybody is doing a nightclub act." Adds Mamie: "Bo has a heck of a good voice. I know, because he sings to me in the car."

In Boulder, Colo., the home-town folks cheered Astronaut Scott Carpenter, 38, on hand to dedicate a new $195,000 community swimming pool. Following Carpenter's brief speech, Mayor John P. Holloway rose to say: "When you open a highway, you cut a ribbon. When you build a building, you lay a cornerstone. In the case of a pool, the only way . . ." Thus, done with formalities, the mayor and three Boulder officials threw the triple-orbiting spaceman --trim grey suit, white shirt, striped tie and all--headlong into the water, manfully jumped in after him.

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