For once, Gloria Steinem, 36, the ranking elder stateswoman of Women's Lib, did not have the first word. Jack Lemmon, 48, the actor whose movie about a middle-aged sellout, Save the Tiger, is big at the box office, beat her to it. Both were in Cambridge, Mass., to receive awards from Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatricals. Lemmon allowed that Ms. Steinem "scared the hell out of me." Would he rather be Man of the Year than Person of the Year? Replied Lemmon: "...I'm glad to be anything!" Steinem was somewhat more partisan. Accepting an award "For Outstanding Contribution to Personhood," she remarked: "It was important that I come here to end 125 years of sexual deprivation at Hasty Pudding." With that the curtain went up on the annual Hasty Pudding show, Bewitched Bayou, and a Harvard cast in drag--with only one pair of shaved armpits.

Does Howard Hughes know some secret about the latest thing in resorts? Hiding out in the Bahamas or slumming in Managua, Nicaragua, is one thing. But the island of Jersey? Reports had it that Hughes was eying one or another of two vast medieval manor houses surrounded by oceans of greenery, both priced at near $2.4 million. What was there about the Channel island that could bring Hughes out of seclusion in the ninth floor of London's Inn on the Park hotel? Certainly not the fact that Jersey would charge him very little in the way of taxes, for, as an American abroad, Hughes could skip taxes only on the first $20,000 of his U.S.-earned income. The weather? Jersey is one of the sunniest places in the British Isles. Ibiza, move over.

Liberated Woman Germaine Greer, author of the bestselling book The Female Eunuch, is rarely without something shocking to say. Still, British readers who picked up her regular column in London's Sunday Times were bemused. IT'S TIME VD WAS SOCIALLY ACCEPTED, the headline announced, and the story went on to argue, with slightly Shavian logic, that the pox is now so prevalent that no one who has it should be obliged to feel guilty. "I wish at this point I could announce publicly I had had a venereal disease," Ms. Greer concluded. "Despite a lifetime of service to the cause of sexual liberation, I have never caught venereal disease, which makes me feel rather like an Arctic explorer who has never had frostbite."

Once again shaking hands proved to be a politician's biggest occupational hazard. In the reception line at the Democratic Party's new headquarters in Chicago's LaSalle Hotel, Mayor Richard J. Daley found himself touching skin with Joel Weisman, political reporter for

Chicago Today. Weisman had recently published several stories that embarrassed the mayor, including one about his son John Patrick, who seemed to bring millions of dollars of city business with him to a recent job with an Evanston insurance agency. Shaking Daley's hand firmly, Weisman congratulated the mayor on "your beautiful headquarters." The mayor thanked him politely. Still gripping Daley's hand, Weisman leaned forward and asked, "By the way, when will you be releasing your promised statement on your sons' economic interests?" Pulling back and trying to shove Weisman on down the line, Daley yelled: "Well, when I do, I sure ain't going to give it to you or your newspaper. You never printed a true thing in your life." Weisman answered: "If you give it to me, I'll print every comma and period--and I presume, since you'll be saying it, it'll be true." "Reporter, huh?", bellowed Daley as Weisman walked away. "If you're a reporter, I am a ballet dancer."

What's a little backslapping between friends? The backslapping between President Richard Nixon and Actress Debbie Reynolds, however, had reached such a pitch that it sounded suspiciously like a claque. Debbie, who was one of the supporting cast of big stars at Nixon's San Clemente pre-election party, limped into Washington last month with a revival of the 1919 musical Irene--and, despite help from Fellow Trouper Patsy Kelly, got only so-so reviews. Except for one. On the aisle was Debbie's old friend the Chief Executive himself--attending a D.C. theater for the first time as President. Afterward he predicted that when the play reaches Broadway, it will be a big hit, "perhaps not with the New Yorkers but with the out-of-towners." Then he called Debbie "a superstar." Immediately advance sales jumped at the box office; matinees were almost sold out until late June. Debbie and Carrie, her daughter by Eddie Fisher, who is in the chorus of the show, joined the Nixons and Norman Vincent Peale for prayers at the White House. Again, the President praised Irene. March 13 Debbie will face the New York critics, who may have more trouble giving Debbie and Irene a hand.

In each successive frame the royal expression got curiouser and curiouser. With her camera resting on her lap in the best tourist manner, Queen Elizabeth was cheerfully taking tea and watching a parade of elephants while on her tour of Thailand last year. Suddenly, in a series of baffling photographs just published in London, Elizabeth registered first dismay, then pain, then a rictus of what looked like sheer agony. Was it that tea? A tack on the chair? Back trouble? Horst Ossinger, the German photographer who caught the moment with a telephoto lens, and won the Holland World Press Photo Contest prize for it, doesn't know. And the Queen isn't telling.

Meyer Lansky, 70, the mystery man widely thought to be one of the financial wizards of organized U.S. crime, at last got his comeuppance, or at least some of his comeuppance. On the lam from the IRS since 1970, he was refused Israeli citizenship. Lansky finally returned to Miami to face trial on a criminal contempt charge--for failure to obey a subpoena. Lansky swore that his doctor had declared him too ill to make the long trip home. Nonetheless, the jury found him guilty. Now Lansky faces a charge of income tax evasion and one of skimming the profits off Las Vegas casinos, both with long-term sentences. After posting bonds totaling $650,000, he was temporarily free to ponder the high price of crime.

No matter what everyone else was saying about the Met's million-dollar Greek vase (TIME, March 5), John D. Cooney, curator of ancient art at the prestigious Cleveland Museum, had his own outspoken opinions. Were the Metropolitan Museum and Thomas Having in the wrong to pick up the 2,500-year-old krater that may have been bootlegged out of Italy? "Ninety-five percent of ancient art material in this country has been smuggled in," Cooney said. "If the museums began to send back all the smuggled material to their countries of origin, the museum walls would be bare." Back at the Met, Curator of Greek and Roman Art Dietrich von Bothmer reacted to Cooney's words. "It's so crude," he said.

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