By GuyD. Garcia

"It's a tough game, like shooting foul shots. You miss more than you make," says Wilt Chamberlain, 47, who after eleven years of retirement from pro basketball is putting on a full-court press for stardom in Conan: King of Thieves, due out this summer. In the sequel to 1982's barbaric hit, the 7-ft. 1-in. former N.B.A. champion dunks some nasty villains as the warrior Bombaata, who is on a perilous adventure with the shorter (6 ft. 2 in.) but broader Conan, portrayed again with brutish authority by Celebrity Iron Pumper Arnold Schwarzenegger, 36. Also along for the fun and grunts in the film, now shooting in Mexico, is the Amazonian Zula, played by Model-Disco Star Grace Jones, 30. How does Wilt the Stilt feel about trading his hoop spiking for a spiked club? "I figure if I'm going to be a baddie, I better have something serious to back me up," he says. "I designed it myself. I might take it with me the next time I'm out for a walk in New York."

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It was intended by its U.S. producers to be a tribute to the late Egyptian President, but when the TV film Sadat was screened recently for a censorship committee that included Egyptian Minister of Culture Muhammed Radwan, something had obviously been lost in the translation. Charging that the 1983 film, which stars Louis Gossett Jr., 47, contained "historical errors that distort the accomplishments of the Egyptian people," Radwan banned from his country not only Sadat but all films produced or distributed by Columbia Pictures. Egyptian objections to the four-hour movie are not so much that Anwar Sadat is played by a black actor, as some reports have suggested, but that accents are often Pakistani rather than Egyptian; some of the garb worn is found in Morocco, not Egypt; Nasser is shown kissing Sadat's wife, an abominated Westernism. Moreover, to the Egyptians the film seems to tilt inaccurately toward Menachem Begin in awarding credit for the Egyptian-Israeli accords. Nonsense, counters Sadat Producer Daniel Blatt. The real reason for the ban lies in the shifting sands of Egyptian politics, he says. "They no longer like Sadat and the peace he made."

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His 30 seconds over Tokyo as an Air Force squadron commander during World War II earned now retired Lieut. General James Doolittle the Congressional Medal of Honor. Other highflying exploits earned him a Distinguished Flying Cross and a Silver Star. Of course, it still takes all those medals and a token to get on the bus. But now Doolittle, 87, has an honor he could use while piloting his car along the lower altitudes of the California freeway system: personalized license plates. Following an act of the legislature, Doolittle and about two dozen other Congressional Medal of Honor winners living in the Golden State were paraded through the center of Sacramento and awarded the numbered plates on the steps of the capitol. (Doolittle, the fifth oldest, got plate 05.) Although "pleased and flattered," the general hasn't yet decided whether he will use the plates.

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She had always wanted to write a memoir, but her dad did not favor the project. "You write it and I'll kill you," he said. Antoinette Giancana prudently decided to humor him, but in 1975 her dad Sam ("Momo") Giancana was shot down gangland-style. She waited a year -- "You know, this Italian thing of letting the body get cold first"-- and started to work with the help of a professional writer. Among the more titillating tidbits in Mafia Princess, to be published next month, is the implication that Frank Sinatra misspoke himself in 1981 when he told the Nevada state gaming control board that he had never been friendly with the Chicago-based mobster or shared interests with him in a Lake Tahoe casino. Giancana says that Sinatra and her father were good pals as far back as the mid-'50s and may have been quiet partners in the Cal-Neva Lodge; she quotes previously unreleased FBI documents as support. Giancana, 48, is upset, however, that news of the Sinatra snippet is "taking precedence over the humanistic part of the book. It was not done maliciously. I'm not a malicious person. Others may be, but I'm not."