The feet were the hardest part. First there was a gold ring to fit onto each big toe, and then two tinkling anklets to snap into place. Finally the soles of her feet were painted red. But it was not just for kicks. Heiress Barbara Mutton, 51, a Protestant, was marrying Laotian Painter-Chemist Prince Raymond Doan Vinh Na Champassak, 48, a Buddhist, and they were doing it his way. Babs had never tried a Buddhist ceremony, and so this time around it was a sari affair at her $1,500,000 estate near Cuernavaca, Mexico. There were seven tiers to the wedding cake, not in honor of her seven husbands but in honor of the groom's rank in Laos, and when the violin-serenaded reception was over, she was Princess Barbara Hutton Mdivani Haugwitz-Reventlow Grant Troubetzkoy Rubirosa Von Cramm Na Champassak.

Boob tube, idiot box, or whatever else people call it, television is responsible for the bacon David Brinkley, 43, brings home, and the ham-on-wry commentator felt moved to pay homage to its glories. But what to say? "Television," he finally advised some University of North Carolina students, "is the only thing in the world that is punctual." People, planes and trains are late, he continued thoughtfully, but TV is on time. "It may be lousy, but it's on time."

Ach du lie her! And the archivist in East Berlin hurried off to tell his bosses. He had just unearthed a copy of Marlene Dietrich's long-missing birth certificate. Unable to keep the secret, the

East Germans passed it on to West Berlin authorities. They tattled, too, and soon the word was out that Marvelous Marlene, whose age has been pegged as low as 54, was really 62 years old last Dec. 27. Marlene's reaction to it all? There won't be any, if her pals have their way. Said Old Friend Major Donald Neville-Willing in England, where she's on a business trip: "I don't think she knows about the story. She doesn't read the papers here and doesn't watch television. I don't think her old friends, good friends, will mention it to her. It probably is true, but so what. She looks 40, and that's that." Quite!

For ten days the prisoners of Rome's Regina Coeli prison anxiously studied their catechisms. Then at 8 one morning last week, Pope Paul VI, 66, arrived to celebrate Mass, the first modern Pope ever to do so in a jail (Pope John XXIII visited the same prison in 1958, but did not say Mass). Four prisoners assisted Paul at the ceremony, and more than 600 inmates received Communion. Afterward, with the men pressing freely around him, the Pontiff was moved to tears, as he told them: "I have come to kindle in each of you a flame that may have gone out." When he left after 21 hours, he took with him a kneeling stand made for him at the prison--and an album containing brief declarations of faith from almost all the 1,110 inmates.

In 1946 when the Roosevelt dime came out, the U.S. mint was flooded with queries about the initials J.S. at the base of Franklin Roosevelt's neck. Quite a few outraged folks thought the letters stood for Joseph Stalin, and that it was all a Communist plot, until Designer John Sinnock patiently explained that the initials were his. Now there is a flurry over the new Kennedy half-dollar, and it's the Reds again. Complaints are coming into the Denver mint that there is a hammer and sickle on the coin. Wearily, the mint's Chief Sculptor and Engraver Gilroy Roberts, 59, explains: "It's my monogram, a G. and an R. in script, combined. It might look like two sickles maybe. But it looks nothing like a hammer and sickle at all. You've got to have a slanted mind to see that there."

His kite was tangled in the power line behind his home outside Houston, and the impatient youngster tried to unsnarl the mess by poking at it with a rake. Zap, crackle, pop. The line short-circuited, burned through and fell, sparking and whipping, onto a chain link fence. That was a job for Superman --but he didn't show. Fortunately another stellar hero lived next door, and Scott Carpenter, 38, came to the rescue. While a second neighbor held the wires down with a board, the astronaut laid into the 120-volt cable with a wooden-handled ax, soon cut it free of the fence. Oohed an awed housewife:

"One man leaned on the fence no more than two minutes later. I don't know whether he realized . . ."

A two-week, fun-filled trip to France, including a week on the Riviera and a week in Paris? No jingles to write. No puzzles to solve. In fact, no contest to enter. All you have to do is be the editor of Izvestia. And since that describes Aleksei Adzhubei, 39, he was the lucky winner of an invitation from the France-U.S.S.R. Friendship Society. Though in Paris it was mostly speeches and press conferences for him, Wife Rada managed to sneak off with Eugenia Vinogradov, the wife of the Soviet Ambassador, and ogle the florally flimsy bikinis displayed at a specially set-up fashion show. Still, Aleksei was perfectly willing to comment on haute couture. Said he: "Soviet women were accustomed to wearing boots, and one day I deplored this in Izvestia. Finally our women gave them up. Then boots became a la mode in Paris, and now Soviet women are wearing them again."

Everybody else was writing the Internal Revenue Service, too, but the U.S.'s top female folk singer sent the revenooers a slightly offbeat message. She started chummily enough. "Dear Friends," said the handwritten letter, "What I have to say is this: I do not believe in war. I do not believe in the weapons of war. I am not going to volunteer the 60% of my year's income tax that goes to armaments. I am no longer supporting my portion of the arms race. Sincerely yours--Joan C. Baez."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.