Dressed in Afghan clothes and with an eleven-day growth of beard covering his $8 million face, he looked a little like a young extra in a Dannon yogurt commercial. But with pluck, luck and a crew of four, Dan Rather risked not only his life but the ulcers of CBS executives to bring back some of the first detailed film accounts of the fighting between Afghan rebels and Soviet soldiers for a 27-minute segment of 60 Minutes. Rather's whispered report from a darkened mountain ledge sounded like a cross between one of Edward R. Murrow's World War II This ...Is London radio broadcasts and the hushed commentary from the 18th hole of the U.S. Open. Rather tried to blend in with the rebels, but Washington Post Television Critic Tom Shales, who dubbed him "Gunga Dan," observed: "A $50 haircut still looks like a $50 haircut--even when mussed up a little." Rather says wryly that his haircuts, in fact, cost just $4.

When it comes to curves, Loni Anderson, the shapely, savvy receptionist of television's WKRP in Cincinnati, does not have to take a back seat to anyone. Who better then to play the title role in Jayne Mansfield: A Symbol of the '50s, a CBS-TV movie about the cinematic sex queen. Anderson, 33, at 36-24-36, is somewhat shy of Mansfield's more pronounced 40-18-36 but hardly needs Body shaping for Women, the recent how-to book by her co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who plays Jayne's second husband, Mickey Hargitay.

In the twelve years before his death in 1870, Charles Dickens wrote some of his best-loved books (including A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations) and, according to a 1939 biography, Dickens and Daughter, by Gladys Storey, took up with Ellen Ternan, a young actress. Though many critics dismissed Storey's claim at the time, it appears that more than a few of Dickens' Christmases past, after he separated from Wife Catherine, were indeed spent in Ternan's company. A clutch of Storey's papers has turned up in London; included are notes of a conversation with the author's son, Henry, in which he confirmed that the couple had a baby son who died in infancy and that Dickens kept a house and servants for his mistress. Says Massachusetts-based Writer Monica Dickens, 65, of her great-grandfather's adventures: "It just makes him all the more human."

In his Canticle of the Creatures, written about 1225, St. Francis of Assist blessed the Lord for "Brother Sun," "Sister Moon," stars, fire, water and earth. The founder of the Franciscan order developed a wide following during his life for his appreciation of nature's bounty. In recent times, his popularity has grown: St. Francis has been the subject of numerous movies and biographies, and became something of a cult idol for hippies in the 1960s. Now it is Pope John Paul II who has honored St. Francis. The Pope named him Patron Saint of Ecology because "he has sung stupendously the beauties of nature, considering it a marvelous gift of God to humanity."

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