His first vaudeville job offered little training for a future Hollywood heavy, observes Actor James Cagney in his new autobiography Cagney by Cagney. "It was a female-impersonation act," says Jimmy, now 71. "Six guys in skirts, serving basically as a chorus line, and one of the 'girls' was quitting. I filled the vacancy." Cagney, who eventually grew from vaudeville chorine to cinema mobster, says he never felt quite at home with his tough-guy image. That famous grapefruit-in-the-face scene with Mae Clarke in The Public Enemy (1931), he complains, followed him for years: "Invariably, whenever I went into a restaurant there was always some wag having the waiter bring me a tray of grapefruit. It got to be awfully tiresome." So which of his 62 films did he enjoy the most? Yankee Doodle Dandy, in which he played the Broadway music maker George M. Cohan. Says Jimmy, now a gentleman farmer in New York:

"Once a song-and-dance man, always a song-and-dance man . . . Those few words tell as much about me professionally as there is to tell."

It was meant to be a vehicle for his wife, Actress Susannah York, but Writer Michael Wells' newest play looks more like a ride she should have avoided. The Great Ban, which opened in London's Soho district last week, stars York as a former actress who lapses into confused reveries, childhood recollections, and a brief impression of Marilyn Monroe.

"An unintentional parody of all the worst excesses of fringe theater," blasted Time Out magazine. Said the Financial Times critic: "I was alarmed to read in the programme that the play is one part of a trilogy." York, now appearing in U.S. movie theaters as the star of Conduct Unbecoming, plans to complete her four-week run in Soho despite the bad notices. Even if audiences think the vehicle sputters, obviously the body work looks just fine.

When her sometime friendship with President John Kennedy and Chicago Mobster Sam Giancana became public knowledge last month, turned up by the Senate investigation of the CIA, Judith Campbell Exner seemed sure of one thing. Appearing at a San Diego press conference, Exner, 42, assured reporters that she had no interest in profiting by telling tales out of the White House. She has apparently changed her mind. Last week New York Literary Agent Scott Meredith announced that Exner had agreed to write an autobiography and provide details of her relationship with J.F.K. Her asking price for the still unwritten book, said Exner's Attorney, Brian Monaghan, would be "somewhere around $2 million."

After successfully eluding most photographers for the past 35 years. Actress Greta Garbo has now done her famous disappearing act for a Swedish court. The former film star, 70, recently inherited $720, but court officers have been unable to find the heiress in New York, where she lives most of the year. Their latest ploy: a missing persons' notice in the Swedish government newspaper, Post and Inrikes Tidningar. "I don't believe Greta will take the money," mused longtime Garbo friend Countess Kerstin Bernadotte, 65. "Perhaps she'll send it to poor relatives in Sweden."

After 35 years of tracking down big stories for the Flash, Girl Reporter Brenda Starr has finally tracked down her man. The funny-papers heroine, still a red-haired beauty of 23, last week exchanged wedding vows with dashing, eye-patched Basil St. John on the cartoon page of 150 newspapers. To celebrate, Starr Creator Dale Messick, 69, joined with some 125 well wishers for a mock reception in Washington, D.C.

Lovelorn Columnist Ann Landers came to offer advice; Priscilla of Boston, who PEOPLE designed Tricia Nixon's wedding gown, put on a fashion show; and Ellen Proxmire, wife of Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire, brought a four-tiered wedding cake. Cartoon fans, take heart. Before the evening's end, Messick assured all present that Brenda would stick to her old newspaper beat for some time to come. After all, explained Dale, "she didn't marry a rich boy."

"I was all swollen and puffed up; I looked like a Frankenstein monster," complained Astrologer-Author Sybil Leek, recalling her visit to South Carolina last November. Scheduled to address a convention of auto executives, Sybil had stopped by the Hilton Head Inn pool beforehand "for a few deep breaths of good air." The seer failed to see a stream of gas from a rusty chemical cylinder, however, and instead of air, inhaled some escaping chlorine. The result, says Astrologer Leek, was a case of chemical pneumonia, a four-day hospital stay and two months of severe headaches. Forgoing mystical incantations, the astrologer last week resorted to another old remedy: a $1.5 million lawsuit against the hotel and chlorine company for negligence.

"I'd hold up the camera and I'd say, 'Can I take it?' Sometimes people would run, and sometimes they'd stay still," recounted Julie Nixon Eisenhower, describing her first stab at photography during a twelve-day visit to China earlier this month. "I'm not a professional photographer, just a tourist," cautioned Julie, who still managed to click off 288 vacation snaps, including some respectable photos of Husband David atop a stone camel at the Ming Tombs. Lest Julie's amateur shutterbugging go awry, Chinese photographers accompanied the couple and presented them with a record of their trip. One other gift was included--a surprise 63rd birthday cake for Dad from the Shanghai Revolution ary Committee. "It said 'Happy Birthday, Mr. Nixon,' "disclosed Julie, "both in English and Chinese."

SENATOR JAVITS SLEEPS WITH AGENT FOR IRAN, quipped the Village Voice headline in a jab at New York's Jacob Javits, 71, and Wife Marion, 51. Since September, the paper revealed, the Senator's wife has been on file in Washington as an official agent for a foreign government. The reason: her $67,500-a-year post as a public relations consultant for Iran National Airlines Corp. The job is the high point of Marion's five-year career with Ruder & Finn, a New York p.r. firm, but possibly compromising for the Senator, who is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a supporter of Israel. The couple was quick to dismiss any danger of a conflict of interest, however. Though he felt "very badly" about the job, said Jack, "when it comes to our professional obligations, we pursue independent lives and make independent judgments." Even so, Marion hinted at some wifely tactics she would use when the Senator returned from Washington. "I am going to say, 'Booby, I love you. Come, let's have a drink and talk this over.'

The somber gentleman playing the washboard in San Francisco last week was no musician. Still, some of that unorthodox syncopation seemed to fit right in with Turk Murphy's Dixieland jazz band. "Actually, I've never worked on washboard," confessed NBC's John Chancellor. "But I've always played some kind of rhythm--drumsticks, spoons, whatever." Chancellor, who had gone to California for a short vacation, spent one set practicing offstage, then joined the band at Earthquake Mc-Goon's for I Wish I Was in Peoria and The New Orleans Stomp. Does he aspire to anything greater in music? "Maybe a bigger washboard."

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