Add one more item to Heiress-Artist Gloria Vanderbilt's list of keep-busy projects. After trying her touch at painting, fabric design and collages in recent years, Gloria, 51, now hopes to market some of her artistic know-how in a new magazine. The quarterly, which is modestly called Gloria Vanderbilt Designs for Your Home, promises to supply how-to tips in painting, crochet, needlepoint, embroidery, quilting, knitting, rug making, sewing and other skills for ambitious homemakers. All of which may help even Creative Director Vanderbilt to pick up a new stitch or two. "I haven't a clue about how to do needlepoint," she confessed last week. "And sewing is a mystery to me."

Since they are no longer the hip Steve and Eydie of prime-time television, Sonny and Cher have been living their lives like a daytime soap opera. Just three days after the couple's June 27 divorce, you may recall, Cher married Rock Singer Gregg Allman. Her second try at wedded bliss lasted only nine days, however, before Cher returned to court to file for another divorce. Then last week while Sonny was plugging his new solo act on NBC's Tonight Show, who should stroll onstage for a surprise visit? None other than the prodigal Cher herself. Friends of the couple now hint that the on-camera reunion was just a first step toward a resumption of the old partnership. Locked in a $20 million suit over their predivorce show-business commitments, the two are likely to settle their legal dispute by getting their stage act together for some concert and nightclub appearances. Explained Cher to the Tonight Show audience: "We get along really fine; better now than we ever used to." Stay tuned.

"Good business is the best art," concludes Pop Artist Andy Warhol in his book, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again). The book, scheduled for release in September, includes Warhol's ruminations about money ("It shouldn't be for everybody--you wouldn't know who was important"), death ("I don't believe in it, because you're not around to know that it's happened"), and his unnerving experiences as a TV talk-show guest ("I just sit there saying I'm going to faint' "). To promote his latest creation, Warhol has offered to autograph every copy of Philosophy ordered by bookstores and wholesalers before July 25. At last count he had written some 12,000 signatures and was still going strong. Good business, after all, is the best art.

After a hard day at the job, some folks like to slip into something comfortable and just clown around for a while. Take Actor Walter Matthau, who teamed up with Son Charles, 13, and Stepdaughter Lucy Saroyan, 29 (daughter of Writer William Saroyan), for opening night of the Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Los Angeles. While Singer Tony Orlando played ringmaster, Actors Bob Newhart, Robert Mitchum, Sally Struthers and other off-duty stars paraded into center ring on elephants, all to raise money for Project Hope. "Circus performers are without guile, thoroughly professional," said Matthau after the annual charity performance. "On opening night, you never see a case of nerves or any of that temperamental nonsense so common in the rest of show business. It's a very special and loving world."

"A lot of married people who work together complain about spending so much time together," notes Charles Bronson, who is now making his fourth movie in 14 months with Wife Jill Ireland. "But Jill and I still don't seem to have enough time with each other."

Bronson's new film, From Noon to Three, shows the sullen superstar as a western bank robber and Ireland as a fetching widow. The script calls for some heavy breathing in the clinches, but apparently not enough to suit the husband-wife team. Complains Bronson: "Sometimes a whole day passes on the set before we can get a few moments to talk about something intimate."

A scant six feet of space separated Japanese Crown Prince Akihito and Princess Michiko from tragedy. The first members of the royal family to visit Okinawa in 54 years, Akihito and Michiko had stopped to place a wreath at a World War II memorial when a helmeted attacker tossed a Molotov cocktail that landed two yards from their feet. Miraculously unhurt, the couple retreated to their car while police arrested two radical students for the firebombing. Okinawa was the scene of 187,000 Japanese deaths during World War II, and last week's attack served as a grim reminder of the resentment for these losses that is still directed at Emperor Hirohito and his family. -

"He's got a good right hand. I mean, I don't like to get hit with it," admits former Heavyweight Boxing Champ Joe Frazier. The right hand belongs to Marvis Frazier, 14, Smokin' Joe's son and newest sparring partner. "I've been trying to keep him out of here for five or six years or more," says the ex-champ, who has been training at his Philadelphia gym for a Sept. 30 bout with Muhammad Ali. "But he keeps finding excuses to get down here and put gloves on." Marvis, a ninth-grader who stands an inch and a half taller than his father and has a longer reach, worries about his weak left hook. Still, he is considering a pro career in the ring. Promises Papa: "If he did decide to get into it, he would have the best trainers in the world. And he wouldn't have to worry about getting a fair shake." No, sir.

While former President Richard Nixon was enjoying a barefoot walk in the Southern California sun last week, some of his presidential papers were facing the light of day as well. An estimated two tons of Nixon memorabilia were shipped from San Clemente to the Indianapolis offices of the Saturday Evening Post (now a homey revival heavy on nostalgia). The magazine, which still employs Nixon's daughter Julie Eisenhower as a consulting editor, hopes to use the borrowed documents for several articles on the Nixon presidency, including one feature by psychologists explaining the differences in public reaction to Watergate. Or, as Republican Publisher Cory Ser Vaas put it, "how some groups rise up in righteous wrath to join in a stone throwing and lynching while the other extreme prefers to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil."

"Can you imagine anyone else for this part?" asked Greek Film Producer Nico Mastorakis, 34. "Aristotle Onassis was a wealthy Zorba the Greek. Whenever I thought of Onassis on the screen, I thought of Anthony Quinn." With a $6 million budget, Mastorakis signed up Quinn, the movie Zorba, to portray Onassis in the film Tycoon. Since Jacqueline Onassis has not responded to a $1 million offer to portray herself, says the producer, he is thinking of Julie Christie in Jackie's role and Irene Papas as Opera Singer Maria Callas, one of the many women in Ari's life. Despite the potentially volatile subject matter of his movie, Mastorakis is sure that his biography will be considered evenhanded. With so many of Ari's influential acquaintances to be depicted, he says, "we need two writers and a dozen good lawyers to write the script."

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