Frequently a bone-crushing, ego-bruising boss and companion, the late President Lyndon Johnson was at his most magnetic and charming with women. Over the years, followers of the Johnson career noted how he enjoyed flirting with, among others, the irrepressible Barbara Howar, Actress Merle Oberon, and White House Journalist Marianne Means. Questioned on the Today Show last week by Barbara Walters, his widow Lady Bird, 61, did not deny Lyndon had been a ladies' man. "Lyndon was a people lover," she said, "and that did not exclude half the people in the world --women. Oh, I think perhaps there was a time or two ..." Mrs. Johnson did not finish that sentence, but her next illustrated why their own relationship had been such a durable one: "If all those ladies had some good points that I didn't have, I hope I had the good sense to try and learn a little bit by it."

Despite the shivers it gives his insurance company, Actor Paul Newman, 49, will not kick speed. As for his family's feelings: "They love it," says Paul. Since making the 1969 auto-racing movie Winning, Newman has raced "as often as anyone asks me" on amateur cc circuits, but without much success. In October he escaped injury when his souped-up Datsun slammed into a bank during a practice run. He was unlucky in the recent Daytona races; his car overheated in the seventh lap. But Paul is relaxed about his record: "Someone said to me, why don't you enter at Daytona. and I said, why not? I'm a very whimsical person."

The White House waved its wand last week--and overnight former Vice President Spiro Agnew was left defenseless in Frank Sinatra's compound in Palm Springs. Finally knuckling under to congressional pressure, GAO rulings and public criticism of the nearly $200,000 spent on Agnew's protection since he resigned in October, the White House withdrew not only his Secret Service guards but his car and chauffeur too. Still, Agnew's trip to Palm Springs had a positive side. He sold his novel, A Very Special Relationship, to Playboy Press for "more than $50,000." The book centers round a liberal Vice President in the Washington of 1983 who becomes entangled with a tough, sexy Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. So far, Agnew has turned out 15 pages, plus six pages each of outline and character sketches. Calling him a "good natural writer," Agnew's agent Scott Meredith explained that Playboy Press had been chosen because "it is the voice of the rebellious young." He neglected to add that several other publishers had turned the former Vice President down flat.

Ineligible to succeed himself for a third term, Oregon's popular Governor Tom McCall, 60, was cautious about the latest announced contender for his office. "She has all her marbles," he acknowledged. As for the lady chasing the Republican gubernatorial nomination this year--Mrs. Dorothy Lawson McCall, 85--she promised support for most of her son's record. She has assured him that she will continue his innovative environmental programs but will avoid "putting my foot in my mouth"--a reference to the Governor's outspokenness. McCall said that any discouragement from him "would only spur her on," and sat back to watch the other candidates struggle with the motherhood issue. As for Mrs. McCall, she is campaigning at her own pace. When a reporter arrived at her Portland home for an interview, he was sent away. The candidate was taking a bath.

In the pseudotough tones of the neorealist, Novelist Norman Mailer, 51, has always claimed he writes only for cash.

Lately he has been making some nice change. In the past five years, the prolific Mailer has juggled publishing contracts to earn around $250,000 a year. Another $500,000 is expected to come in from his recent book Marilyn. Still, it only just supports a $200,000-a-year life-style that is shaped by five marriages and seven children. Last week Wheeler-Dealer Mailer brought off the coup of his career: a record $1 million from Little Brown for a proposed saga about "a family from ancient history to future history" which will end aboard a spaceship. Swearing off such distractions as TV appearances and journalistic ephemera, Mailer has retired to his Stockbridge, Mass., house to write the novel over the next few years. Commenting on the largest known sum paid for a work of fiction, New York Publisher Roger Straus said: "It's crazy, man."

As befits a more than 200-year-old gentleman's dining and theatrical club that has numbered Presidents including John Adams and John Kennedy among its members, Harvard's Hasty Pudding is proudly behind the times. The annual high spot, a transvestite revue replete with high-kicking chorus boys, is garnished with a "Hasty Pudding Woman-of-the-Year Award." This year the honors went to Faye Dunaway, 33, hailed as "the most explosive package of beautiful talent to have hit the stage and screen in years." Faye, whose only sizable screen detonation occurred in 1967 when she starred in Bonnie and Clyde, enjoyed the Cambridge ceremonies: a Faye Dunaway look-alike contest, won by a platinum-wigged male student, and a couple of numbers from this year's revue, Keep Your Pantheon. Later she gushed: "These Harvard guys are wonderful, and they play it straight."

The canonization of Lenny Bruce, the Dr. Johnson of four-letter words, continues. Seven years ago, Bruce died a junkie's death in Hollywood, hounded by obscenity charges. To many admirers, he was a martyr to middle-class morality, and now he is being hailed as the most influential social satirist of the era. A dozen-odd records of Lenny are available, plays and films have been made of his life, and now another movie is under way in Miami. Dustin Hoffman, 36, has the lead in Bob Fosse's Lenny, and, on location, he came up with his own analysis of Bruce. "He was a man who loved his country and believed in the Constitution, in the right to freedom of speech." As to whether Lenny was pornographic, Hoffman declared: "The words weren't used to make the audience horny."

The day that Diva Maria Callas, 50, was to appear at her first New York recital in nine years, the phone rang at Impresario Sol Hurok's hotel. There was, said the operator, a lady friend of 20 years' standing who wished to speak to him. "That's not nearly long enough," said Hurok, refusing to take the call. He got the message anyway. Callas was canceling because of a sore throat. The 2,800 fans, some of whom had paid as much as $100 a ticket, were disappointed, even tearful, but not altogether surprised. Maria had done the same thing in London in September. Many promised to try again when the volatile soprano is next scheduled to visit New York, later in her current three-month North American tour. The turn of events may have actually raised sales for future Callas appearances. As one fan put it: "The cancellation of this recital is more exciting than any concert I've been to this year."

No sooner had Princess Elizabeth of Toro, 34, accepted the post of Ugandan Ambassador to Egypt last month than General Idi ("Big Daddy") Amin Dada changed his mind. Deciding that he could not part with Elizabeth or her talents, he appointed her instead Uganda's Minister of Foreign Affairs. Ugandan observers consider the promotion a practical rather than romantic measure. Not only does Big Daddy, a Moslem, already have four wives, but he is sadly short of Cabinet talent among his cronies, mostly former NCOS and privates. Before Elizabeth's appointment, he had flayed the Foreign Affairs Ministry as "the weakest and most inefficient I have ever seen." That was after the Ugandan Ambassador to France, Paulo Muwanga, allegedly had absconded to London, taking 500,000 French francs and 25 Ugandan passports "for his family."

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