Shortly after her bike was taken off the top of the studio car, a spry Katharine Hepburn, 64, rode it round the Temple, the lawyers' compound in the ancient City of London. On location for Love Among the Ruins, a made-for-TV movie in which she stars for the first time with Laurence Olivier, 67, Hepburn shucked her heavy Edwardian costume for her between-takes exercise and accepted a welcome cuppa char. Katie plays a retired actress being sued for breach of promise by a young man and defended in court by her old beau, Barrister Olivier. Says Producer Allan Davis: "The actress, lawyer and young man spend the picture jockeying for position, just like in the shooting." As for Hepburn, she seems most concerned about keeping fit.

No longer the Iowa teen-ager who starred as St. Joan, Jean Seberg, 35, is a film director. Now, she and her third husband, aspiring Director Dennis Berry, 29, live in bourgeois comfort on Paris' Left Bank patronizing young film makers and actors. One of them, Jean-Franc,ois Ferriol, "feels he is a reincarnation of Billy the Kid," said Jean, who thereupon sat down and wrote a two-reeler called Ballad for the Kid. The script calls for an encounter between Billy, played by Ferriol, and a Hollywood star from the '30s, played by Jean. "When it is shown," said Director Seberg, "I would like to say to the audience, 'Let me invite you into a little dream.' "

It was 9:25 a.m. A serious Martha Mitchell touched up her Directoire coiffure and faced the cameras wearing green silk and diamonds. Following her successful talkshow debut on Washington's Panorama last April, Martha was putting in a week as co-host of New York WCBS-TV morning klatsch, The Pat Collins Show. Often staying up until 4 a.m. in her Manhattan apartment to do her homework on guests that included David Halberstam, Gloria Steinem and Washington Post Reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Martha allowed no inhibitions to mar her technique. Slipping into her favorite role of dumbbelle at King Richard's Court, she recounted her fall from favor. Bored at Camp David, she had wandered off looking for a book, strayed into the President's (empty) bedroom, then fell asleep on his bed. After that, she said, assuming the expression of a wounded whale, "bad things happened to Martha." She was playful with Woodward. "Come on," she teased, "you voted for Richard Nixon in '68, didn't you?" A ruffled Bob admitted it. Bernstein huffily remarked that there was such a thing as the secret ballot. Later, Martha jumped into Carl's lap, just to show that there were no hard feelings.

"I think it's good to have quiet and prayer and love in your heart. I think this hate is just uncalled for." Pat Nixon sounded a little like a Sunday-school teacher faced with an unruly pupil. In fact, she was ducking a question about Moslem customs posed by a reporter: "Would you like to pray five times a day?" For seven days, while President Nixon hammered out agreements with Middle East leaders, Pat went out to meet the people, gracefully adapting to the varied cultures of the region. In Saudi Arabia, where women are seldom seen in public, Pat greeted a shopkeeper in Jidda (top), and quipped, "I wish I could come here without an escort and have some fun." In Damascus' Azem Palace she met a stone camel (left).

In an Israeli kibbutz (bottom, right), she told the schoolchildren it was time she learned their language. A Palestinian-style embroidered dress was presented to Pat in Jordan (bottom). "I would put it on," she said, "but wearing an additional dress would be too warm." However, for a tour of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Pat had to don the long black robe that women wear to enter the Moslem holy places (top, right). Once she made a gaffe. With King Hussein of Jordan's wife Alia she visited the Greco-Roman city of Jerash (left), where she shopped at an open market. On the steps at the ruined Temple of Artemis, goddess of hunting, Pat said, "There must be buried treasures here. They should excavate." Reproved the guide politely: "Just the history is treasure enough for us." Pat made a quick recovery: "That's what I meant."

Math Teacher Angela ("Bay") Buchanan, 25, feels just the way about effete snobs that her big brother Pat does. But the younger sister of President Nixon's sharp-tongued conservative adviser feels the same about Pat's pals too. "I just don't like politicians and all their phoniness," she said, after a Melbourne newspaper had revealed her plans to emigrate to Australia. "I'm very disgusted with the Watergate mess," she declared, adding, "Australia's far enough away that people there won't be talking about American politics." Bristling when she is introduced around Washington as "Pat Buchanan's sister," Bay longs for anonymity. "I plan to go to Sydney and be a little nobody, maybe get a little waitress job or something."

Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture is a medley of the sounds of war. Cannons roar, bells chime, whistles and trumpets pierce the muffled drumbeat. Seeking superrealism in his interpretation, Atlanta Symphony Conductor Robert Shaw installed 16 electronically controlled explosive devices to simulate cannons in the pit. Last week, before a crowd of 1,500, he pressed a button on the conductor's stand on cue, and a smoky, skull-splitting blast filled the Atlanta Memorial Arts Center. That triggered a smoke-sensitive automatic fire alarm. In minutes, 25 eager firemen charged into the auditorium, axes and hoses at the ready. While a dazed audience watched helplessly, the firemen made for the smoke-filled pit and came within a split second of dousing both crowd and orchestra. Shaw admitted to confusion. "As the smoke cleared and firemen in full asbestos regalia appeared, it became apparent that what I had mistaken in the din of battle as a premature entry of chimes was the smell-all, tell-all alarm that did not know its brass from the principal bass."

"I work only according to God's directions," explained Uganda's mercurial leader General Idi ("Big Daddy") Amin Dada, who has added film making to his myriad activities. A transfixed TV audience in England last week saw Big Daddy explain the necessity of killing 3 spies, guerrillas and Israelis, give a detailed demonstration of military tactics, and dress down his Foreign Minister, --who, notes the commentator dryly, turned up dead in the Nile two weeks later. To those new to Big Daddy, French Director Barbet Schroeder's Autoportrait seemed to be an African rendering of Titus Andronicus. For three weeks last whiter, Schroeder and his crew tried to capture Big Daddy on film. Amin himself planned and supervised each day's shooting, improvising enthusiastically to illustrate his ideas. By turns charming and cruel, shrewd and funny, Amin credits his popularity to his sincerity. "I always speak the truth," he said. Already a hit in Paris, Autoportrait, which opens in two London cinemas this week, includes a homey note. Posing with seven of his 18 children, the general chortles: "I'm a very good marksman."

The shade of fiery Eva Peron must have winced. Touring Europe on behalf of her ailing husband, Argentina's President Juan Peron, 78, Isabelita, 44, made it clear that she was not trying to usurp his role. In Rome, Eva's successor gave a 55-minute speech defining the feminine ideal with a kicker worthy of Gertrude Stein: "Women have to be and feel no more than what they are and no less than what they must be."

There is something worse than a golf or football widow--and that is a boxer's wife. Honing the will to win, some trainers like to keep their stars sexually frustrated. Last week as a presumably fighting-mad Heavyweight Jerry Quarry, 29, weighed in at Madison Square Garden for his bout with former World Champion Joe Frazier, his wife Charlie weighed in with comments on their married life for NBC's Today show. "We have a two-week curfew," explained the blonde former Miss Indiana. "Gil Clancy, Jerry's manager, is in the room right next to us, and his ear is glued to the wall. If there's a cough in the middle of the night, Gil says, 'What are you doing in there?' " Getting Jerry alone has not been easy. The Quarrys. married in August, just two days before a fight. Since then Jerry's schedule has been so crowded that he and Charlie were not able to take a honeymoon until last month. Alas, Clancy's faith in chastity as a training regimen was not justified. Frazier kayoed Quarry in the fifth round.

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