Sunday afternoons were miserable for Vince Lombard!, 55, after he gave up coaching and became full-time general manager of the Green Bay Packers, the football team that he molded to greatness. So, after a year of restless prowling in the executive inner sanctum, Lombardi signaled a new play: a transfer to the National Football League's moribund Washington Redskins as head coach. The Packers' board tried blocking him for a bit but finally yielded. His new contract calls for "a substantial portion of equity," rumored to be 5% of the Redskin stock, worth $500,000. Skins fans, who last savored a national championship in 1942, are already worrying about tickets for next year's title match.

When an old eye ailment forced him to drop out of his own golf tournament, the Bob Hope Desert Classic in Palm Springs, Calif., the comedian had a substitute at the ready: that former song-and-dance man, Senator George Murphy. Said Hope of his replacement: "He's certainly made his mark on the Senate floor. He forgot to take his tap shoes off."

That monumental spin through space will be hard to match, but even so, Apollo 8 Command Pilot Frank Borman has had some rarefied moments on earth since reentry. Last week, for instance, a European tour took him from Buckingham Palace to the Elysee Palace to a dinner with Belgium's King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola. Borman proved himself a deft diplomat. In England he pointed out that Apollo's fuel cell was based on an invention by a Cambridge scientist. In Paris he praised French Science Fiction Author Jules Verne in a personal letter to his grandson, Jean-Jules Verne. After an audience with President Charles de Gaulle, he reported, with just the right touch of humility: "I was awed. I realized I was in the presence of a great man."

The temperature in Quebec City was 10DEG F., and Princess Grace of Monaco, in town for the annual Winter Carnival and a visit to an old friend, Mrs. Gilles Lamontagne, wife of the mayor, was appropriately cool and collected when newsmen collared her for some comments. On the problem of raising bilingual children (French and English): "I'm still waiting for someone to write a handbook on it." On the trials of being an exactress: she finds it "flattering" to receive film offers but politely declines them. As for films in general: "I'm awfully tired of seeing people take their clothes off."

Everybody was well fortified with vintage Mumm's champagne before the bubbly pairs of part-time actors began playing the part of traveling companions in the filming of a series of Braniff Airways commercials. First off, there was baseball's Whitey Ford tweaking the twitching mustache of Salvador Dali. Then came another Odd Couple, Mickey Rooney and Rex Reed. "Let's hurry this show up," cracked the much-married Rooney. "I gotta be in court. I'm gettin' another divorce, ya know." The most memorable set of seatmates, though, was Novelist Mickey Spillane ("I only write for money") and venerable Poet Marianne Moore. "This is gonna ruin my reputation," quipped Spillane, sipping a glass of milk while Miss Moore sampled the champagne. "Don't worry," the director assured the poet when she began tugging on her calf-length skirt. "You could have worn your miniskirt for these closeups." "I did," she retorted.

There stood French Minister of Culture Andre Malraux, all set to lay a block of rock from the Louvre in place as the cornerstone for the new $2.4 million Marc Chagall Memorial Museum in Nice. Beside him beamed Chagall. Then out of the crowd leaped a mustachioed, bald-headed fellow crying "A has Chagalir Splat! With unerring aim he squirted Malraux in the face with a syringe full of red paint. Cat-quick, Malraux grabbed the weapon and squirted the squirter back. "There are cranks everywhere," he shrugged as the flics took custody of the offender, a Riviera artist named Pierre Pinoncelli. "I don't intend to press charges," said Malraux. "It's just watercolor," cried Pinoncelli as the cops carted him away. "You won't even have to send your coat to the cleaner--just wash it off."

For 50 years the punny words poured out of his typewriter, recounting the sexcapades of starlets, giving pufflicity where it was due, telling of splituations and apartaches, and tut-tutting nawdy titles from rot 'n' roll singers. Once, 1,000 newspapers carried his columns, and a nationwide radio audience leaned forward in its chair to catch his Sunday flashes for "Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea ..." Last week, with his syndication down to 100 papers and the radio program long since scratched, Walter Winchell, 71, announced his retirement. Still "shaken up" over the December suicide of his only son, Walter Jr., he has been vacationing in Paradise Valley, Ariz. Said he: "We've had a lot of heartaches. This is the time for me to step down."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.