"There's nothing in the rule book that says a basketball floor can't be purple," says Pop Artist Robert Indiana. Or orange, blue, yellow and red, the colors Indiana has just used to paint the floor boards of the Milwaukee Exposition Convention Center Arena, home of the Milwaukee Bucks. Indiana, 49, who is best known for his LOVE with the leaning O, started with a yellow floor, then brushed red free-throw lanes between wide orange strips. He enclosed the center-court jump circle in an orange diamond and bordered the entire court with a thin blue strip. Indiana's color scheme, which cost Milwaukee taxpayers $27,500, may seem to clash with the Bucks' green uniforms. Indiana concedes the point. Says he: "Naturally, the next thing will be to bring the players' uniforms into sync with the floor design."

He passed up the 13-ft.-tall tortoise and a giant Fiberglas banana split, but Texas Oil Heir Lamar Hunt finally found what he wanted at last week's auction in New York City: a 21-ft.-tall Humpty Dumpty. The massive mobile sculptures were all retired showpieces from Macy's Thanksgiving Day parades, and all had been put on the block to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Hunt, who also owns the Kansas City Chiefs, paid $4,000 for his wood-and-Fiber-glas Humpty and announced plans to perch it in his Worlds of Fun amusement park in Kansas City. Was it a high price to pay? Answered Hunt: "It was--for an egg with a big crack in it."

When his fellow writers fled into exile at the end of the Spanish Civil War, Vicente Aleixandre was left behind, a chronic invalid with tuberculosis. But Aleixandre triumphed over both political oppression and physical adversity, and last week won the 1977 Nobel Prize for Literature. Citing the "strength to survive" that dominated much of his verse, the Nobel committee praised Aleixandre, now 79, for work that, rooted in the tradition of Spanish lyric poetry and modern currents, "illuminates man's condition in the cosmos and in present-day society." Said the surprised Aleixandre, who will collect $145,833 and his Nobel medal in December: "My life won't change with this prize. It was a very pleasant surprise, but I'll go on working with my regular application till the end."

"We don't know how the secret was discovered," said a perplexed spokesman for Denmark's Forum Publishers. The secret: Ingahild Grathmer, pseudonymous illustrator for a special edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring, is none other than Danish Queen Margrethe. It seems that the Queen struck up a correspondence with Tolkien some years ago and sent the Oxford philologist as many as 80 pen-and-ink drawings of the fanciful creatures that populate his adult fairy tales. Only recently did Forum get her permission to publish her work in the new edition of Ring, which will be limited to 1,500 copies selling for $165 apiece. Forum says the Queen's reward, which she plans to donate to charity, will be a standard illustrator's fee. Royalties would seem to be more appropriate.

"It's a mixture of Cleopatra, Lawrence of Arabia and Dick and Jane," says Jennifer O'Neill about the movie version of James Michener's Caravans. Jennifer, 29, won acclaim for her role as a grieving but indulgent young war widow in Summer of '42. This time she plays an adventurous American woman who follows a desert caravan and wins the grudging respect of a nomad chieftain (Anthony Quinn). Caravan is being filmed in Iran, and Jennifer sometimes longs for the comforts of home. "It's terribly hot," she says. "Your eyes get red, the winds whip sand all over you--and there is no dry cleaner near by."

At 81, Comedian George Burns is still throwing punch lines like a heavyweight. He has just finished work on a November TV special titled The George Burns One-Man Show and is preparing for a starring part in the movie Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. A new comedy film, Oh, God!, featuring Burns in the title role, has just opened. Last week the active octogenarian paused long enough to drop into the Beverly Hilton hotel and accept the first annual Jack Benny Memorial Award from the March of Dimes. While Ann-Margret, Bob Hope and some 700 others at the $125-a-plate fund raiser looked on, Frank Sinatra presented Burns with his newest trophy: a large but empty humidor. "The award will keep Jack's memory alive," promised George. "And it'll keep me alive. I can put enough cigars in the humidor to last me another 30 to 40 years."

As Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, Actor Mark Hamill scooted over Tatooine in a weathered aircar. In his next picture, he settles for more down-to-earth transportation. Stingray stars Hamill as a high school hot-rod builder and Annie Potts as a hippie hooker who jumps into his passenger seat. Hamill got a few bruises from his Stingray stunts and a brief scare from a California cop. Says Hamill: "We were horsing around on Van Nuys Boulevard, and a cop came over and told us to get out of the Stingray. When he saw the camera and realized we were making a movie, he turned as red as the car and walked away." Apparently even when Skywalker has his wheels on the ground, the Force is with him.

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