A healthy-looking and cheerful George Wallace, 54, was on a sojourn in a bastion of what he has called the pointyheads who can't park a bicycle straight: New York City. After accepting a Freedom Award from the right-wing Order of Lafayette, Wallace visited his doctor, Ling Sun Chu, a Manhattan internist, then taped a program for Barbara Walters' TV series, Not for Women Only. The subject: the acupuncture treatments he has received from Dr. Chu to ease discomfort caused by his paralyzed legs. Perhaps conscious that a Chinese medical technique might seem exotic to Middle Americans, Wallace hastened to give the administrator of the treatments solid and, yes, American credentials. "Dr. Chu," he said, "is a Western medicine man, graduate of Harvard," adding with a twinkle, "and I don't hold that against him."

Author and Civil Rights Champion Harry Golden, 71, lost his own civil rights back in the '30s when he served a five-year term for perpetrating stock frauds through the mails. But Golden rehabilitated himself and became editor of the now-defunct Carolina Israelite, parlaying his faith in the American system into bestselling fame in a 1958 book of essays called Only in America. Still, only a presidential pardon could erase the penalties of being an ex-con, so Golden applied for one. Last week President Nixon granted his wish. Golden then exercised one of his restored rights: he announced plans to run for the Charlotte, N.C., city council--as a Democrat.

"You gotta trade in your old car when it can't make the hills," was the way Entrepreneur Chuck Traynor, 34, explained his switch in roles: from exhusband and manager of Linda (Deep Throat) Lovelace to manager of Marilyn (Behind the Green Door) Chambers. "I hope I'm never your old car," giggled Marilyn after she had made a successful New Jersey nightclub debut preparatory to a Las Vegas gig. Meanwhile, Old Car Lovelace was making the grade quite nicely without Chuck. In Cambridge, Mass., she was awarded the Harvard Lampoon's "Wilde Oscar" for risking "worldly damnation in the pursuit of artistic fulfillment." Then she returned to rehearsals for the national tour of Pajama Tops, a bedroom farce in which she will make her legit debut on Christmas Day.

"She had the strength of the American soil which she loved so much and understood so well." Thus Violinist Yehudi Menuhin, 57, remembers Cornhusker Willa Cather, who died in 1947. In 1930 Menuhin, then a 14-year-old New York-born musical prodigy, first met the middle-aged novelist from Red Cloud, Neb., in Paris, and a fast friendship was formed. Last week Menuhin flew from his London home to Lincoln, Neb., to highlight the University of Nebraska's celebrations on the centennial of Gather's birth. His contribution: a family concert. His two sisters, Pianists Hephzibah, 53, and Yaltah, 52, joined Yehudi to honor the memory of the woman the Menuhins called Aunt Willa.

Everything you don't want your little girl to become, Bette Midler had finally arrived at Manhattan's Palace Theater. Before an audience drawn mostly from the clientele of her favorite night spot, the Continental Baths, Midler demonstrated once again that she is a superb female impersonator. Not, however, as good as Rodney Pigeon. The following night at the Blue Angel nightclub, Rodney, 20, scored a succesfou in the French-inspired transvestite revue Zou. Hurling himself onto the pocket-handkerchief stage, the divine Miss M's carbon copy skittered and tittered while belting out Midler's theme song, Friends.

Literary Lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov, 74, identified a unique American species, the Nymphet, in his 1958 novel Lolita. Although the work was internationally acclaimed, it failed to win any of the major American book awards. In fact, the Russian-born Nabokov, who is frequently mentioned as a potential Nobel prizewinner, has picked up few prizes; five of his novels have been nominated for National Book Awards, only to be ultimately passed over. Now the self-described "pleasant outsider" has landed one of the country's most distinguished prizes: the National Medal for Literature, awarded for a living American writer's total literary contribution. At his Montreux, Switzerland, home, a modest Nabokov could only say: "I think it was a very good idea to give the prize to me."

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