It is a pressagent's dream. There are Pop Singer and Composer John Phillips, 37, his first wife, Michelle Phillips, 29, and his second missus, South African Actress Genevieve Waite, 26, all making music for their "family label," Paramour Records. No hanky-panky about it either. Although Phillips, who with Michelle, Cass Elliot, and Denny Doherty founded the Mamas and the Papas singing group in 1965, likes to call his life-style with a giggle "a menage `a trois," the relationship seems to be purely commercial. Michelle and Genevieve are capital investments. "There's something about me that makes women sing," he declared from his Manhattan town house. Said Michelle at her West Coast home: "He keeps us both busy," referring to the fact that she and Genevieve are currently cutting discs of John's songs. Apart from that, she added, "we lead very separate lives."

The U.S. protocol office found itself suffering from an embarrassment of riches. Since Columnist Maxene Cheshire disclosed in May that there were discrepancies in the reporting of gifts received by Pat Nixon and her daughters, jewel boxes all over official Washington have been emptied. Among those hurriedly delivering diamonds, rubies and emeralds to the gifts office were Betty Fulbright, wife of Senator J. William, whose Foreign Relations Committee drafted the 1966 law that does not permit officials or their families to accept gifts worth more than $50. The greatest surprise came when Hubert Humphrey turned in a 7.9 carat diamond estimated to be worth more than $100,000. Presented to Muriel Humphrey in 1968 by Zaire's President Mobutu Sese Seko, along with ten leopard skins from a Somalia official, the diamond has been resting in a Minneapolis safe-deposit box. The skins were sold in 1970 for $7,500, which was given to the Louise Whitbeck Fraser School for the mentally retarded in Minneapolis. Pleading ignorance of the 1966 law, Humphrey said in Washington last week: "At no time did any officer of the State Department or any other agency of Government inform me that gifts received by me or members of my family should be placed in the custody of the department."

They conversed, it seems, mainly about the weather. Still, Prince Charles "made me feel at ease," said Laura Jo Watkins, 20. She was describing how she first met Charles when his frigate H.M.S. Jupiter visited San Diego last March. At an official reception, blonde and voluptuous Laura Jo stood in for her father, Rear Admiral James Watkins, U.S.N., and his wife Sheila. Last week she found herself listening to some more of Charles' talk. As his guest, she sat in the Strangers' Galleries at the House of Lords when he made his maiden speech, 16 minutes on the need for recreational facilities for young people. Charles and Laura Jo were having their own problems about recreational facilities. A secretarial student at San Diego's Kelsey-Jenney College, Laura Jo was invited on Charles' suggestion to attend retiring U.S. Ambassador Walter Annenberg's farewell party. He had to cancel out because of the death of his great-uncle, the Duke of Gloucester. Instead, Laura Jo visited Charles privately at Kensington Palace. Her mother professed astonishment: "Surely he must have lots of English girl friends." Chagrined mums round England took comfort from the fact that since Laura Jo is Roman Catholic, Charles is forbidden by law to marry her. Anyway, in an interview Charles gave to the London Observer Charles stuck to his previous statement that he would marry someone more or less of his own rank. "Marriage," he said, "isn't an 'up' or 'down' issue. It's a side-by-side one."

Very old grizzlies in Yellowstone National Park last week must have thought that their eyes were deceiving them. There, tramping the trails, was Ranger Jack Ford, 22, the spitting image of his dad Jerry, who spent a summer as a Yellowstone ranger in 1936. Jack, a senior at Utah State University majoring in forestry, looks forward to his summer, particularly since the Vice President is so enthusiastic. "I rode shotgun for a garbage truck. I had a great time holding a gun on the bears as they feasted on garbage," recalls Jerry. "And I never fired a shot."

"Up there in my civvies, staring at all those black and red costumes, I kept wondering if everything was hanging right," said Beverly Sills, confessing to stage fright. On an unfamiliar stage last week, the Brooklyn-born soprano became an honorary doctor of music in Harvard Yard, along with Mstislav Rostropovich, the Russian cellist. "It was much more nerve-racking than any performance," said Beverly. "Maybe I should have sung instead." Doctor Beverly joshed Husband and Harvard Alumnus Peter Greenough saying, "I'm a Harvard man just like the other Greenoughs." Then she referred to her son Bucky who is mentally retarded: "I hoped my little boy would go to Harvard too one day. But he never will, so I'll just have to pick up a degree for him."

It was a microbopper parable out of Oliver Twist. There on the Queen Mary, docked at Long Beach, Calif., was little Lena Zavaroni, 10, the Scottish youngster with the big Garland voice who topped the Common Market charts in 1973 with her recording of Ma, He's Making Eyes at Me. As she gyrated with prepubescent salaciousness at the end of a U.S. promotion tour, her managers Phil and Dorothy Solomon looked on with satisfaction. "Our biggest problem in England," said Phil, "is the antiquated work laws for children. Why, Lena can only give 40 performances a year." Noting that in the U.S. laws are more liberal, he predicted that "by fall Lena will probably be living in Los Angeles." Lena is enjoying what may turn out to be a short career. The Solomons have refused her singing lessons because they fear training would remove her voice's earthy appeal. Thus Lena is in danger of losing her voice entirely, a fate that befell another Solomon prodigy, Neil Reed, a twelve-year-old who apparently started croaking after a mere eight months. However, said Phil, "girls' voices are supposed to hold up longer than boys'."

Two parish priests take in a broken-down movie actress and--bingo!--pretty soon she stars at a benefit for them. Next week in Manhattan, blonde dynamo Betty Hutton, 53, who hurtled through some 20 musicals in the '40s and '50s, will be the big-name attraction at a $50 and $100 a plate dinner to raise money for St. Anthony's Church in Portsmouth, R.I. On hand for the occasion will be some 300 of her friends and admirers, including Arlene Dahl, George Jessel and Kate Smith. Betty had fetched up on the rectory doorstep last February, stone-broke and despondent about four divorces and a dead-end acting career. Taken on as an unpaid cook-housekeeper by Fathers Peter Maguire and James Hamilton, she wasted no time at all bouncing back. "She's lost none of her zip," said Father Maguire, adding proudly, "She does a tremendous thing with lamb." Baptized a Lutheran, Betty recently converted to Roman Catholicism, and she has wryly christened her hit breakfast recipe, oatmeal topped with Cool Whip, "Catholic cement."

Hello, Ethel. Most patrons of Manhattan's Roosevelt Hospital Gift Shop do a double take when the auburn-haired saleslady hands them their change. Pressed, she admits, "Yes, I'm Ethel Merman." Keeping her Klaxon mute, Ethel does not even hum as she bustles about the shop, straightening rows of candy bars and selling cookies. But, say admiring fellow workers, "she's definitely improved sales." Enlisting as a volunteer when her mother was hospitalized at Roosevelt eleven months ago, Ethel was first a patients' escort, then joined the gift shop. Now she comes in at least once a week--her other engagements, such as a concert tour with Carroll O'Connor permitting. "She's a great wrapper," says the shop's manager. Belts Ethel: "I'm lousy at corners." Then Nonsmoker Merman confessed her only vice: an innocuous form of sniffing. At the cupboard where the cigarette cartons are stored, she inhaled happily. "It smells just like a Dunhill humidor," she said.

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