In one sense, Actress Geraldine Chaplin brings very little to her television role of Lily Bart in Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth. Says Chaplin about the bustled turn-of-the-century gowns she wears: "I get to have a behind, which I don't have in normal life." But Chaplin has little sympathy for Lily, who ignores love in favor of a convenient marriage and who snuffs herself out with chloral after her reputation is compromised. Says Chaplin, who for 13 years has lived uncompromisingly with Spanish Director Carlos Saura: "I like playing her. I wouldn't want to live next door to her."

As sound and light shows go, it was a stunner. This time the ageless Pyramids of Giza were bathed in Sinatra as well as lumiere. Ol' Blue Eyes, accompanied by Wife Barbara, appeared in Cairo for the first time as part of a three-day bash to raise funds for Wafa Wal Amal, the rehabilitation center for the handicapped that is First Lady Jehan Sadat's favorite charity. Jehan and Barbara struck it off famously, but Sinatra kept mostly to himself until showtime. By then the sand near the Pyramids had been covered with 300 carpets for the comfort of guests who had paid up to $30,000 a table to hear him sing such golden oldies as The Lady Is a Tramp, Someone to Watch over Me and, of course, My Way. Between songs Sinatra cracked Italian and Jewish jokes and complimented Host Anwar Sadat: "He really is a great cat."

If this is Friday, that must be the touring Cleveland Orchestra that Lorin Maazel, 49, is conducting at London's Royal Festival Hall. Maazel, who is fluent in English, French and German, also works with the French Orchestre National and has agreed as well to direct and conduct at Vienna's hallowed State Opera. When he begins his pit stops there in 1982, Maazel will face the unusually intense musical politics that have made Vienna the bane of conductors. So great is the municipal love of music that even the orchestra members, drawn from the Vienna Philharmonic, can be merciless to leaders they do not respect. In this century alone, three illustrious predecessors--Gustav Mahler, Karl Bohm and Herbert von Karajan--all threw down batons and left in their huffs before their contracts were due to expire.

In his time, Orson Welles has played everything from Kane to king. Now he is a country sheriff in Never Trust an Honest Thief, shooting in Las Vegas. Welles, who complains of the state of his personal exchequer, says he was attracted to the role partly because "the villains are the tax gatherers." In another effort to make ends meet, Welles can be seen on closed-circuit TV at Caesars Palace explaining the intricacies of craps, baccarat, roulette and blackjack to fledgling high rollers.

The explanations in Welles' orotund delivery become bemusingly classical: "The biggest dice game in history was for some very high stakes indeed. Zeus, Poseidon and Hades rolled for the universe. Poseidon won the oceans, Hades the underworld and Zeus the heavens. It is thought that Zeus owned the dice."

On the Record

John B. Anderson, Illinois Republican and declared presidential candidate, defending his rather low popularity ratings in recent polls: "I'm no longer an asterisk. I've achieved a percentage."

Benjamin Bradlee, Washington Post executive editor, recalling Pundit Walter Lippmann at the Boston dedication of a Lippmann library: "He was the first big-shot journalist I knew who listened as much as he talked. Come to think of it, I haven't met that many since."

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