First came the fan mail, including one note that read: "I'm in love with you; I hear your songs in my sleep." Then two healthy cats arrived, accompanied by five boxes of clothes and a would-be groupie. Trouble was, none of this tribute pleased Emmett Kelly, 77, who is more famous as the somber, sad-eyed clown Weary Willie than as a singer. Kelly, a former star with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, says his problems were caused by Pop Tunesmith Neil Sedaka. On posters for his album Hungry Years, Sedaka appears in clown face similar to the character Kelly created in 1921 and later copyrighted. "Weary Willie is my makeup and my face. It's an infringement," complained the clown, adding he may sue both Sedaka and Rocket Records. "I can't wait 'til Neil's mother hears about that," responded Rocket Attorney Barry Tyerman. "If anybody has a copyright on that face, she does."

For a high-kicking hoofer, Shirley MacLaine put her foot in a strange place last week. Her mouth. After a sellout tour through Europe with her song-and-dance revue, MacLaine was booked into the Palace Theater for her first Broadway stage appearance since The Pajama Game 22 years ago. How nice to be back in "the Karen Quinlan of cities," said Shirley, comparing the life expectancy of New York with that of the young New Jersey woman, whose tragic yearlong coma stirred a lingering right-to-life court battle. MacLaine's audience, including Jackie Onassis and Congresswoman Bella Abzug, sat in silence. After the show Miss MacLaine lamely explained, "I remembered that line was going around Washington. I was trying to say New York should have the power to make its own decisions." The remark, she added, "came off the top of my head, and I wished it had stayed there." Two days later she telephoned her apologies to the Quinlan family.

Judging from his performance as guest host of TV's irreverent, ploddingly skittish variety show, NBC's Saturday Night, Presidential Press Secretary Ron Nessen does not have much future as a comedian. The question some people were asking last week is what sort of future does he have as a presidential press secretary? With good-natured daring, Nessen--a former NBC newsman--appeared in several satiric turns with Gagster Chevy Chase, whose weekly specialty is a lampoon of Ron's accident-prone boss. Nessen played straight man as Chase impersonated President Ford stapling his ear to his head, trying to hit a golf ball with a tennis racket and stumbling through the Oval Office with a football helmet on his head. While Nessen was off-camera, another SN regular launched a malapropian tirade against "presidential erections." As a result of prior urgings by Nessen and White House Photographer David Kennerly, President Ford briefly appeared on the show, via videotape, with some wooden gags of his own. Though a number of Republican viewers were appalled at Nessen's poor judgment, White House officials chose to characterize the affair as regrettable but forgettable. The President was reported to be "not pleased." As for the erstwhile star himself, Nessen opined that discussing the show was "not something grown men should be doing."

She is a former fashion model, an author (Amazon Odyssey), and a radical feminist who collected as much as $ 1,500 per speech on the lecture circuit. Ti-Graee Atkinson, 37, is something more. "I'm broke," she announced last week, after receiving her first New York City welfare check. The reason? Those well-paying speaking engagements have apparently gone the way of student sit-ins and antiwar marches. She had applied for menial jobs, too, she noted, "But people say I'm too old or too famous or too hot to handle." Atkinson, who has delivered plenty of barbs to male chauvinists and unmilitant feminists in her time, has a new target: the welfare department. To collect her first $47 semimonthly check, she complained, she had spent two weeks "dealing with the most stonefaced, cold, uncompassionate people I have ever seen. Why must it be so difficult?" Replied an official: "You're not supposed to be able to send in a postcard and get welfare."

Armed with her new "handle" (nickname) and her newest toy, a mobile Citizen's Band radio, First Lady Betty Ford went to Texas last week on a campaign trip for Husband Jerry. "You got First Mama. There's a lot of Smokeys on my front door," said Betty, radioing from her Secret Service car with all the aplomb of a veteran trucker. (Translation: "This is the First Lady. I see plenty of policemen in front of me.") Though she probably hopes to pick up a few votes for her husband from the 11 to 12 million CB operators in the U.S., Betty has displeased at least one listener with her broadcasts. Earl Stevens, editor of the National CB Truckers' News (circ. 250,000), last week accused First Mama of rustling votes over the Citizen's Band airwaves--a violation, says he, of federal regulations. Fearful that campaigners might clog the air, Stevens has called on the FCC to prevent politicians from rendering "our CB radios useless in election years." Ten-four, First Mama.

Standing together, they look like mismatched members of a computer dating service. But Judith Jamison of New York's Alvin Ailey City Center Dance Co. and Mikhail Baryshnikov, celebrated defector from Russia's Kirov Ballet, will be partners all right--as dancers rather than daters. Last week the couple showed off a few moves to promote a May 11 benefit pas de deux in behalf of the Ailey troupe and Boys Harbor, Inc., a New York charity for youngsters. And how will Jamison (5 ft. 10 in.) fare with the smaller (5 ft. 6 in.) premier danseur? "Misha grows when he dances," she says. "He's expandable."

Can a British rock star find happiness as a Beverly Hills millionaire? Not if he is Rod Stewart, 31, raspy-voiced singer-composer of Maggie May and former lead vocalist with Faces. "I always thought money could buy freedom, but in my case money forced me to leave home," Stewart lamented last week, bemoaning the 83% tax bite that caused him to flee his native England. Of course, Stewart's life in exile cannot be all that bad. His $1 million Beverly Hills mansion is decorated with $125,000 worth of shapely art nouveau doodads, not to mention sometime Actress Britt Ekland, thirtyish. But, says Stewart, "I'm frustrated being away from home. I miss my soccer." He also misses the warm beer and, what's worse, there seems to be just too much rock 'n' roll in California for Stewart's taste. "These bloody earthquakes," he complains. "When the house starts to shake, I have to run about and hold on to everything."

"I'm leaving Sweden because I need a certain security to be able to work." Thus, in an angry letter to Expressen, Sweden's largest daily newspaper, Director Ingmar Bergman, 57, announced that he was closing his film studios and abandoning his native country for keeps. The director, whose work ranges from supersurrealism (The Seventh Seal) to superrealism (Scenes from a Marriage), was investigated earlier this year for tax fraud. Picked up by police in Stockholm, he endured a two-hour grilling, then spent six weeks in the hospital recovering from a "depression." Although the criminal case was dropped last month, Bergman insists that authorities are still trying to collect more than $750,000 in taxes and have threatened to double the bill unless he settles up quickly. "I became so mad that I got well," he explained last week before flying off to Paris. In a final gesture of fiscal contempt for tax officials, whose bureaucracy "is growing like galloping cancer," he declared he would leave behind his assets pending the outcome of the case.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.