Are the Nixon daughters' marriages showing signs of stress? In the February issue of McCall's, David Eisenhower concedes that Watergate is taking its toll in his marriage to Julie. "It's hard on Julie," he says. "In her public appearances she always has to be friendly. At home she will bark at me now and then." Mostly, it seems, about sharing the housework. "No matter how hard I try to reassure her that letting down on household chores doesn't mean I feel any less affection, I get the sense she can't understand that." Meanwhile, Tricia and Eddie Cox have had to endure a three-week geographical separation. From Christmas Day until last Tuesday, Tricia was with her parents at San Clemente and at the White House, while Eddie stayed in Manhattan to work at his law firm. Returning last week to their apartment, Tricia quashed the rumor that they were on the outs. Through her mother's press secretary, she said: "It's a deliberate lie."

"It is just not acceptable that a director of a major commonwealth enterprise should be on pillow-talk terms with the head of government," sniffed the Melbourne Herald, Australia's largest evening paper. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, 57, had not been caught in flagrante delicto; rather his wife Margaret, 54, was being heckled about her latest job. A trained social worker, Margaret Whitlam is a director of the Commonwealth Hostels Ltd., an organization that administers government housing. "Drop it, Meg," was the Herald's blunt advice. But Mrs. Whitlam, whose liberal views on abortion, sex and marijuana have shocked Australians in the past, held on. "I've subjugated myself for an entire year," she said, adding that even official trips were a bore. "Your visit as a Prime Minister's wife so often entails nothing but saying 'how do you do' to 500 people."

Sally Quinn is leaving CBS--sadder, apparently, but wiser. "We hope she's happier than she was here," said Hughes Rudd, Sally's co-anchor on the CBS Morning News. Just five months after the network had hired her away from the Washington Post to make trouble for Barbara Walters of NBC's rival Today, Quinn quit. The victim of a premature publicity buildup and her own inexperience, Sally had also an unfortunate style: she picked over the news as if she could not decide which fork to use. She will join the New York Times's Washington bureau in March. Miss Quinn, 32, was cautious about plans to marry her former boss, Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee, 52. "That's open to a great deal of speculation," said Sally, about that fork in the future.

Imperial circles were divided over the selection of Crown Prince Hirohito's bride in 1918. Some courtiers falsely accused Nagako, the 14-year-old daughter of a princeling, of being colorblind, a stigma that would have disqualified her as the "perfect receptacle" for imperial heirs. Surviving this trauma, Nagako suffered another when, after nearly ten years of marriage, she had not yet produced a son. Urged by his advisers to take a concubine--as many of his prede cessors did--Hirohito refused. This week the couple celebrate their golden wedding anniversary, the dynasty assured by two sons, three daughters and nine grandchildren. The late-blooming Nagako, 70, has become a fine watercolorist and an even better poet, say some of her subjects, than her husband, a renowned versifier and marine biologist. Her most recent waka (31-syllable verse): "The light of dawn shines/ On a crimson bank of clouds/ And morning breaks suddenly/ Over the land of Izu."

The Harvard Lampoon had invited what it called "the biggest fraud in history" to come to Cambridge to accept a Brass Balls Award, created specially for him. Picking up the challenge, John Wayne, 66, rode into town on a 55-ton personnel carrier provided by the Army and accompanied by a bizarre platoon of Jeeps, cavorting cowboys and protesting Indians. At the Harvard Square theater, the Duke was introduced as "a foothill of a man." Then he fielded taunts from the floor. "Is it true your horse filed separation papers?" asked one wag. "He was a little upset when we didn't use him in the last picture," explained Wayne. But apparently even he cannot tear down his macho image. In the midst of the debunking, a woman rose and shouted, "I don't care what they say, you're still a man."

The pugnacious face of Mobster Sonny Corleone glowered from under the big white stetson, only to freeze when the announcer boomed, "It's James Caan of Hollywood, star of Brian's Song and co-star of The Godfather." Distracted by his credits, Cowboy Caan, 33, saw his steer dash safely to the exit at Denver's National Western Stock Show. Though the mishap put him and his partner out of the money in the team roping event, Caan took the setback in stride. He brings to ro-deoing the deadpan dedication of the street-corner cowboy from Queens that he is. He took up the sport several years ago in Nebraska on location, turned professional in 1972. What he likes about the rodeo is its atmosphere. "The cowboys treat you the way they find you," he said. "If they like you, you know it. And if they don't, you know it too."

On hand to open the Orlando, Fla., Gloria Swanson film festival, a charity benefit for local cultural organizations, was the star herself. Now a svelte 74, wearing a slinky black number slit to the knee and trailing a feather boa, Gloria launched a three-day program of movies ranging from Manhandled in 1924 to her comeback success in 1950, Sunset Boulevard. She reminded the first-night audience that she had never retired; she will be appearing next month, festooned with bees in a television movie called Killer Bees. Then she relived her DeMille days by narrating a 60-minute montage of career highlights. That is, as much of them as she could remember. "The young people," she noted afterward, "can tell me more about my own career."

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