By Guy D. Garcia

She was known to millions of TV viewers as Kitten, the youngest member of the Anderson family on Father Knows Best. But when the program ended its run in 1960 after six years, Lauren Chapin, now 38, lost a lot more than a dad who could cope wisely with any domestic crisis. Out of work and spurned by her alcoholic mother, Chapin spent the next 15 years in a twilight zone of casual sex, drugs and jail for forgery. Then, one epochal day, she walked into the Eagle's Nest church in Irvine, Calif. She recalls, "When the pastor said, 'Now if anybody here wants to give their life to the Lord, please stand up and come to the altar,' I didn't hesitate. That was it." She now has a new life as an evangelist. These days, Chapin is more concerned with the human family than the Anderson family. Says she: "God's love is the most complete love, and I think that's what I was looking for."

Howard Cosell, 63, is not exactly the penitent type, but there he was on the phone last week apologizing to the Rev. Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Cosell's offense: during ABC's Monday-night broadcast of a football game between the Washington Redskins and the Dallas Cowboys, he referred to Alvin Garrett, a black wide receiver for the Redskins, as "that little monkey." Cosell's remark "was a slip that reflected a thought," said an incensed Lowery. Cosell, who at first denied the comment, was less abject than adenoidal, even though his remark had lit up the network's switchboard with angry calls. On his daily ABC radio show, Supermouth expressed his admiration for Garrett and noted, accurately, that some of his best friends were black, including Muhammad Ali, Willie Stargell and Sugar Ray Leonard. "I was bragging on him [Garrett] with affection," spouted the righteous sportscaster, adding, "My record as far as race relations is supreme."

In keeping with Marxist-Leninist principles, the judges' guidelines emphasized intelligence and morals over beauty. But the 21-year-old winner, Lidia Wasiak (35-24-36), is a knockout by any ideological standard. The competition for Poland's first beauty queen in 25 years was held last week at Warsaw's Palace of Culture and Science, where Wasiak won the crown that opens the way to the Miss World contest this November in London. A crowd of 4,000 watched their comely comrades parade across the stage in regional costumes, evening gowns and finally, in an inescapable concession to bourgeois tradition, bikinis. Miss Polonia 1983 already has a flair for the banalities of beauty-queen lingo. "It's wonderful," said Wasiak. "My life will certainly change, but I wouldn't like it to change too much."

He may have played the voice of God in the 1966 movie The Bible, but Director John Huston, 77, cannot move mountains. So last month Huston moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico, in the shadow of Popocatepetl, site of his new epic, Under the Volcano. The film, which stars Albert Finney, Jacqueline Bisset and Anthony Andrews, takes place during a single day in 1938, mostly inside the head of its drunken protagonist. "The consul is the most complicated character I've ever had in a film," says Huston. "He's like a Churchill gone bad, a great man with a flaw." Bisset was less awed by her part, as the consul's exwife, than by her boss. "The thing that makes one so frightened is that one has such a great desire to please him," she says, recalling her first meeting with Huston. "I felt like I had three or four Ping-Pong balls in my mouth at all times."

--By Guy D. Garcia This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.