O.K., history buffs, is that bearded man in the picture 1) Ulysses S. Grant, 2) Rutherford B. Hayes, 3) Benjamin Harrison, 4) none of the above? Full credit for answering none. It's Marlon Brando, safely returned from the planet Krypton after all, and unexpectedly bewhiskered. Brando, appearing in Los Angeles' Dodger Stadium for the Rev. Jesse Jackson's "Push for Excellence" rally, did not mention the new growth. He delivered a rambling homily about the American Indian, his favorite cause, and suggested that "sometimes, just staying alive is a push for excellence." Explained a Brando aide about his newly hirsute boss: "He's gotten lazy."

Ah, those fact-finding junkets that send conscientious Congressmen to the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids, the Louvre. Or, in the case of Kansas Senator Robert Dole, en route to a United Nations food conference in Rome, to the village of Castel D'Aiano near Bologna, where he hoisted one or two with some townsmen. Dole's visit was not so much a junket as a sentimental journey. It was at Castel D'Aiano 34 years ago that the Senator, then a young infantry officer, led an attack across the Po River. He was wounded by enemy fire so severely that his right arm is useless. His Italian friends? It was to their house that Dole was dragged for the medical aid that saved his life.

Talk about double-entendre. For the big-production opening and closing numbers of Cinemactress Shirley Mac-Laine's television special, the Bluebells from Paris' famed Lido nightclub were called upon to dance two almost identical versions. Avec bras for U.S. television, a CBS special to be aired May 20. But then, performing before a sophisticated audience at the Lido that included Monaco's Princess Caroline and le Tout-Paris, the chorus danced the same routines sans bras for a later broadcast on European television. Vive les differences.

They usually don't sing in the Cosa Nostra, so who would expect an entire opera bouffe--from one of the godfathers no less? That's pretty much what Arizona agents orchestrated at the modest ranch house of Joseph ("Joe Bananas") Bonanno, 74, in Tucson. For three years and more, undercover snoopers sniffed Bonanno's garbage and found enough evidence to obtain an indictment against Bonanno last week for conspiracy to obstruct justice. In a basement closet they also discovered a 250-page life story, detailing Bonanno's rise to leadership of one of the foremost U.S. Mafia families. The manuscript even carried a working title: My Reign, 1939 to the Present. Investigators speculated that Bonanno intended the autobiography to be published posthumously. Considering the Cosa Nostra view of such things, it still could be.

Vanessa Redgrave is committed. She is also between acting jobs. Thus the fiery star can be found, these pre-election days in Britain, stumping the decaying Moss Side district of industrial Manchester, red hair flowing and red rosette of the Workers Revolutionary Party flapping. Redgrave seeks to become Moss Side's Member of Parliament, but most of the voters she accosts appear more concerned about jobs and high living costs than the party's proposal for a workers' militia to replace the British bobby and its jeremiads against capitalism and the monarchy. Even for such an illustrious candidate, prospects thus appear dim; running in a heavily left-wing London district for the W.R.P. five years ago, Redgrave captured fewer than 600 of the 39,036 votes cast. Never mind. Insists Redgrave: "Socialist principles are more important than votes."

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