By D. Garcia

Like many a President's term in office, a young lady's sweet sixteenth birthday comes only once. And so in honor of the occasion, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter showed up at Woodward Academy last week to take Amy and three school girlfriends out for a surprise family dinner in Atlanta. In addition to the requisite birthday cake, Amy received a bouquet of balloons and a few gifts. But she was back at the private boarding school for the p.m. curfew. She entered Woodward as a junior this fall. And, who knows, the once retiring Amy may follow in her Father's footsteps: she has already been elected president of the Key Club.

The Americanization of Pygmalion: instead of a young Cockney woman's being taught how to speak the King's English, how about a Bronx cab driver's being coached to sing like a country boy? That's what Dolly Parton, 37, is doing to Sylvester Stallone, 37, in Rhinestone, which just started filming in Manhattan. Parton plays a singer in a honky-tonk bar who bets her boss that she can turn anyone into a country-and-western star. Enter You-Know-Who. Country Rocky soon learns how to belt it out not in the ring but on the stage. Off the set, Parton says she has been learning a few things from her health-conscious costar. After a stern summer of dieting, she is lighter by 26 pounds. Says Parton: "Hanging around with him makes it easier for me to stay away from Velveeta and Wonder bread."

No one paid any attention to the dapper, mustachioed gentleman who joined the members of the men-only Friars Club in Manhattan last week at a stag roast for Sid Caesar. By week's end, however, the officers of the 79-year-old male bastion were trying to forget Phillip Downey, better known as Phyllis Oilier, 65. The idea to crash the party came from the loudmouthed comedian's boyfriend, Howard Rose, an architect and dues-paying Friar, and she began working on her disguise a month ago. "I thought they would have a sense of humor about it," says Diller. But the club's brass, which may reprimand Rose, found the stunt a drag in every way. Club Director Jean-Pierre Trebot vows to "increase security." How? Well, he concedes, "we're not about to frisk everybody."

Others may have been treating it as a joke, but Johnny Carson, 58, was not amused. His wife of ten years, Joanna, had filed papers seeking support from him, pending the resolution of the couple's divorce. The requested amount: $220,000 a month. And what did she need roughly $7,000 a day for? Her postnuptial monthly bills include $580 to maintain a Rolls and a Mercedes, $1,400 for groceries and an improbably precise $37,065 for furs and jewelry. Johnny was astonished, but not out of his wits. "I heard from my cat's lawyer," he cracked during one of his TV monologues last week. "My cat wants $12,000 a week for Tender Vittles." Meow.

It's difficult to imagine Virginia Woolf's writing for big laughs, but that is exactly what she did in her only play, Freshwater, which was first staged in 1935 for the amusement of the novelist's Bloomsbury friends. Woolf's unlikely work was resurrected for a two-day run at New York University last week with an equally unlikely cast, which included avant-garde Novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet, 61, and absurdist Playwright Eugene Ionesco, 70. To add to the oddities, this version was in French, having been translated for a Paris production last December. Ionesco, who made his American acting debut in the production, portrayed Alfred Tennyson in the broad farce. He discovered, however, that being profoundly silly can be taxing, even in a play written for an amateur cast. "I suffered a lot during the rehearsals," he observes.

"I'm no longer as young as I once was."

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