Once he clowned and leered and swaggered and waved his cigars and sang preposterous songs like Lydia, the Tattooed Lady. All that is dust now in the fading memory of Julius Henry (Groucho) Marx, 86, confined to a wheelchair after suffering a stroke and a broken hip. Last week a bitter court fight pitted Son Arthur Marx against Erin Fleming, fortyish, Groucho's attractive business manager and constant companion for the last seven years. At issue: whether Fleming should be the guardian of the old man and his multimillion-dollar estate. Nurses testified that Fleming had browbeaten and cursed the comedian, calling him a "pig," a ''vegetable" and a "crazy old man." Other witnesses, however, argued that she cheered him up and that he loved her. Judge Edward Rafeedie decided to pay a personal visit to Groucho and then appointed a longtime friend of Groucho's, Producer Nat Perrin, as temporary guardian. Hearings on the case will resume May 13.

John Ehrlichman, who has begun serving his 20-month to five-year sentence for engineering the illegal plumbers' operation, may soon have two pen pals. A news leak from the U.S. Supreme Court last week indicated that the Justices might well turn down the final appeals by Ehrlichman, 52, H.R. Haldeman, 50, and John Mitchell, 63, of their convictions for conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Though the three could ask for reconsideration by the high court--a process that usually takes no more than three months--their prospects for further delay are bleak. Nixon's former Chief of Staff and Attorney General could well begin serving their minimum 2 1/2-year prison terms by this summer. They have been free on personal recognizance since being convicted in Judge John Sirica's court on Jan. 1. 1975.

Princess Anne strongly dislikes "playing a supporting role, having more attention showered on her brother than herself." Golda Meir can be "undeniably forbidding ... her eyes cold and dark." These and other candid observations are made by Julie Nixon Eisenhower, 28, in her new book Special People (Simon & Schuster; $8.95). Julie, who has nothing to say about her father's troubles in the White House, profiles a wide range of famous figures: Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Ruth Bell Graham, wife of Family Friend Billy, and the late Chairman Mao Tse-tung (who emitted "harsh, primitive, labored grunts" during Julie and David Eisenhower's visit to Peking 16 months ago). Reminiscing about David's grandfather, Dwight Eisenhower, Julie tells how he showed his loyalty to her father during the 1968 campaign even while in the hospital with severe heart trouble. "Ike gave us a huge grin and whipped open his hospital smock, exposing his Nixon buttons! He had stuck Nixon decals on the electrodes attached to his chest."

As a 50th birthday present to himself and "to give something back to my music," Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich is giving a dozen free concerts round the world. But not at home in the U.S.S.R., which he left in 1974 on a two-year visa and to which he does not plan to return until he is guaranteed full artistic freedom. One invitation he accepted was to play with the student orchestra at Brown, in honor of the inauguration of the university's new president, Howard Swearer. So well subscribed was the event that Rostropovich found himself playing the Saint-Saens Concerto No. 1 in A minor in the hockey rink. He also gave some free advice to Brown student cellists ("Technique must come before interpretation"), donned a Brown sweatshirt and won over the campus with his exuberance. One overwhelmed Brown vice president rubbed his cheek bemusedly and said, "I've never been kissed so many times in one day by one man."

"A helluva welcome," mused Roots Author Alex Haley from his perch on the Gambian presidential yacht. "You couldn't have staged that if you wanted to." Haley, 55, was delighted by the tumult of drums, whistles, musket shots, and whirling dancers dressed in leaves--all a salute to him and his brothers George, a lawyer, and Julius, an architect, on their return "home" to the Gambian village of Juffure. There Alex handed the traditional gift of kola nuts to the eldest member of the Kinte family, a distant relative. If all goes according to plan, many other root seekers will follow Haley's footsteps to Gambia. In fact, Gambian officials now expect some 2,000 tourists this summer. Among the spectacles being considered: a sound-and-light show about a slave escaping to freedom. Haley's triumph has been soured a bit recently by charges that some of the details in his book are historically inaccurate, but last week also brought him a resounding vote of confidence: a special Pulitzer Prize.

"It just breaks your heart, but you do the same thing you do when a man breaks your heart--you go out and get another one." So says Elizabeth Ashley, 37, about the collapse of one of her shows. And just two days after the Broadway closing of G.B. Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra (co-starring Rex Harrison), Ashley appeared in Chicago as one of three Texas sorority sisters who grow up and apart in a Jack Heifner play called Vanities. And when Vanities closes? After 17 roles in the past three years, says Ashley, she is "ready to plant my butt under some palm tree."

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