All through the seven weeks in Philadelphia and Boston, they labored to whip Breakfast at Tiffany's into something palatable, but the talents of Playwrights Nunnally Johnson, Abe Burrows and Edward Albee couldn't save the musical. After the fourth dismal preview in Manhattan, Producer David Merrick, 54, flashed a sort of risus sardonicus and announced: "Rather than subject the drama critics and the theatergoing public to an excruciatingly boring evening, I have decided to close the show. It's my Bay of Pigs." And this particular sow's ear will cost Merrick $400,000.

Anyone else who got stuck with a jalopy like that might figure it was a lemon, but State Department Chief of Protocol James Symington, 39, insists: "It's what I've always wanted." At his home in Washington's Wesley Heights, Symington took delivery on a snappy used "pedicab" he bought for $30 in Kuala Lumpur last October. "At first," he said, "I couldn't get the driver to believe I wanted to buy the thing from him--he thought I just wanted a ride." Thing is, just about everyone in Wesley Heights wants a ride now. "I've been a lot more popular lately with the neighborhood kids," puffed Symington.

For the 15th consecutive year, Comedian Bob Hope, 62, set off to give U.S. troops abroad some comic relief over the Christmas holidays, this time packing along Singer Anita Bryant, Professional Harpy Phyllis Diller. Go-Go Dancer Joey Heatherton, and the new Miss World, India's Reita Faria. While the plane refueled at Wake Island on the way to bases in the Philippines, Guam, Thailand and Viet Nam, Hope observed that Evangelist Billy Graham had just left Wake en route to Viet Nam and that New York's Francis Cardinal Spellman would be stopping over soon as he began his Christmas mission to the war zone. Cracked Hope: "That's the kind of book ends I like on a trip like this."

At the airport in Monroe County, N.Y., the TV star smiled at a crowd of 3,000 and winked: "Now that you've seen me live, I'm sure you are disappointed." Hardly. If anything, Bishop Fulton Sheen, 71, looked younger and more vibrant than he did in the days when he was competing with Uncle Miltie for ratings on the tube. Installed next day in his new post as bishop of Rochester by Francis Cardinal Spellman, he also proved that he is still a quick man with the ad lib. Asked how it felt to leave New York City and settle among the greener pastures of Rochester, Sheen replied: "There is a certain road in Ireland where it rains on one side and is all sunshine on the other. It forms a perfect rainbow. The tears are in New York and the sunshine in Rochester for my rainbow."

Passing through Washington on his way to a vacation in Barbados, Randolph Churchill, 55, visited at the Capitol with his daughter Arabella, 17, and passed out a few copies of the first volume of his biography of his father, Winston S. Churchill. "It's my only major achievement," Randolph said later.

A volatile, cranky journalist for most of his life, the great man's son explained wistfully: "I've wasted a lot of my life, but I've enjoyed it all. Now there's a satisfactory conclusion--good, solid work to do." After he finishes the story of his father's life, said Randolph, he may write his autobiography--"but that will be a slender work."

The rumormongers were howling Gotterdammerung. In deep financial trouble, New York's Metropolitan Opera spent over its budget by more than $3,000,000 in the move to its dazzling new house in Manhattan's Lincoln Center, and some said that as a result, General Manager Rudolf Bing, 64, would be fired any day. Not quite. The Met's board announced that it was ex tending Bing's contract by one year, through the 1969-70 season. "I am honored," said Bing. "I hope I survive it."

Two years ago, after suffering a miscarriage, Actress Sophia Loren, 32, promised that next time she'd follow her doctor's orders about taking it easy. Well, it's like that now. So in the midst of making a movie called Once Upon a Time, Sophia canceled out of the film, suspended all other commitments and withdrew to her villa in the Alban Hills outside Rome to await the birth of her first child in May.

Having debated the matter at length with Soviet Poet Evgeny Evtushenko, who thinks the U.S. is in dubious battle in Viet Nam, Nobel Prizewinner John Steinbeck, 64, decided to do some firsthand research. As a columnist for Long Island's Newsday, he arrived in South Viet Nam "to listen to it, to see it for myself." The Army did Correspondent Steinbeck the favor of assigning him a special guide: his son, Specialist Four John Steinbeck, 20.

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