By Claudia Wallis

Though not one to stand on ceremony, Author Norman Mailer, 57, is planning three: a marriage, a divorce and a marriage, in unceremoniously quick succession. The self-described "champion of obscenity, wise father of six [now eight] children and husband of four battling sweet wives" was recently granted his long-contested divorce from sweet wife No. 4, Beverly Bentley, 50. Now he intends to marry Jazz Singer Carol Stevens, 50, with whom he lived from 1969 to 1974, then divorce her and wed former Model Morris Church, 31, his live-in companion of the past five years. But all for the most conventional of reasons: to legitimize Maggie, his nine-year-old daughter by Carol, and John Buffalo, his two-year-old son by Norris. "It is a bit disconcerting," Church admits. "But I understand why he feels he must do this. I have complete faith in Norman's wanting to do the right thing by Carol, by Maggie, by me, by John Buffalo and himself."

"... he entered the room and closed the door behind him. He moved so quickly that his mouth was on mine before either of us could speak ... I knew perfectly well that, whatever adjustments or deceits must inevitably follow, the strange man beside me, more than my husband, owned me." Another steamy Hollywood confession? Indeed, and also another titillating chapter in the ever expanding Kennedy legend. This time the protagonist is not Lady-Killer Jack, but Joseph Sr., family patriarch. In her soon-to-be-published autobiography, Swanson on Swanson, former Movie Queen Gloria Swanson, 81, describes a 1927-29 liaison with the elder Kennedy, a business partner in many of her films. The affair destroyed her marriage to the Marquis de la Falaise, she reports, and nearly ended Kennedy's to Rose. The impending scandal, writes Swanson, led Boston's late William Cardinal O'Connell to beg her to end the affair. "Each time you see him becomes an occasion of sin for him," the Cardinal warned. That did not especially impress either of them. When the two finally fell out, it was over a less spiritual matter--money.

Exactly 100 years ago, Sarah Bernhardt, legendary mistress of melodrama, arrived in America demanding to see the Indians. "She was very disappointed, but she fell in love with the country," says Actress Lilli Palmer, who is preparing to return to Broadway this winter, for the first time in a quarter-century, in the title role of Ruth Wolf's Sarah in America. "I hadn't opened a script for 26 years," says Palmer, now a successful novelist (The Red Raven), living in Switzerland. "I wanted a clean break after my divorce [from Actor Rex Harrison], and I thought that any new play would be a rehash of something I had done." Not Sarah. During the course of the show, the 66-year-old actress will age from 36 to 74, lose a leg, walk on the back of a whale and nearly drown in Niagara Falls. Says a slightly apprehensive Palmer: "I decided it would be cowardly to refuse this."

In 1975 Olin Frick told his friend John Casque to quit playing sandlot baseball and chasing girls, and instead help him search for sunken treasure. Gasque, then a physicist by profession, agreed--a decision he will never regret. Plumbing the waters around the West Indies, Gasque, 30, and Frick, 46, have discovered two 19th century ships, about $250,000 in gold, Ming dynasty china and pearls, and a seemingly worthless old wreck that may turn out to be the most precious find of all. The ship, discovered two years ago in 30 ft. of clear water 60 miles north of Haiti, is, according to a growing number of scholars, Christopher Columbus' Pinta, sister ship to the Nina and the flagship Santa Maria, which is believed to have sunk in a hurricane, eight years after the discovery of North America in 1492. Frick and his partner hope to verify that theory by raising the galleon intact -- a six-month process they will begin next month.

--By Claudia Wallis

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