By E. Graydon Carter

As imposing out of his old basketball uniform as he was in it, Wilt Chamberlain, 46, is gracing Women's Sports magazine's current spoof of the annual SPORTS ILLUSTRATED bathing-suit issue. Retired from basketball for ten years, the 7-ft. 1-in. former center has been helping to run a women's amateur track and field club that is considered one of the country's best. Says Wilt, who agreed to strip down and lather up in baby oil as a way of promoting women's sports: "I had other offers to be a centerfold. I could be bigger than any of them. About eight or nine pages bigger."

In Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Nightingale, the Chinese Emperor, although captivated by the sound of his songbird, replaces it with a jewel-encrusted replica. The parable may reflect the mid-life anxieties of Mick Jagger, 39, who plays the Emperor in this summer's broadcast of Showtime TV's Faerie Tale Theater. Anticipating the end of the Rolling Stones after two decades of great music, Jagger seems to be pointing toward a new life in film. Let's Spend the Night Together, Director Hal Ashby's portrait of the Stones' 1981 U.S. tour, will be released next month. But hold. Dare Jagger really leave rock forever? In The Nightingale, the Emperor recovers from an illness only when his original songbird is brought back to sing for him.

One freeway exit past Disneyland, and on the same tourist-mecca level as the Hollywood Wax Museum and Knott's Berry Farm, lies "Religionland." Or so detractors of Television Evangelist Robert Schuller, 56, have dubbed his $18 million headquarters. 'For the past two years, the "Crystal Cathedral" has been offering such secular, profit-making fare as weight-reduction classes and counseling programs, plus concerts by Lawrence Welk and Victor Borge. State tax authorities would now like to pass their collection plate. "They even had a Ticketron there," says a local tax investigator. "The first time I saw it, I thought: 'You mean you have to buy a ticket to go to church?' " Schuller's cathedral and enterprises, which have revenues of about $30 million a year, may be forced to pay back taxes of up to $400,000 and future taxes of as much as $200,000 a year.

Some cynics might argue that the Senate is full of comedians, but no one doubts that Republican Robert Dole, 59, of Kansas is the upper house's current top banana. Dole was in excellent fettle last week at confirmation hearings for his wife Elizabeth Dole, 46, President Reagan's appointee to the post of Secretary of Transportation. "I feel like Nathan Hale," said he. "I regret that I have but one wife to give to my country's infrastructure." But he may have a challenger for the title of life of the party: California's new Senator, Pete Wilson, 49, who took on James Watt, the aggressive Interior Secretary. "He's off making a science-fiction sequel to E.T., "said Wilson. "It's called Raiders of the Last Park."

Improbable as it might seem, Clio Goldsmith, 25, gave little thought to a career in acting until two years ago. The Paris-born niece of British Financier Sir James Goldsmith, 49, has since finished eight European movies. "I hardly see myself as a sex symbol," says she, "but it is lovely pretending." American audiences will have their first chance to see her pretending in The Gift, a French farce due out in March. As the going-away present given to a retiring banker by his office chums, Goldsmith is a dimpled, tousled-haired romp in the hay who might just finish off the gold-watch industry.

--By E. Graydon Carter This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.