By Guy D. Garcia

The epic novel has intrigued and defied the efforts of such talented screenwriters and directors as Harold Pinter, Luchino Visconti and Peter Brook. For 22 years Producer Nicole Stephane could not get anyone to complete a film based on Marcel Proust's seven-volume Remembrance of Things Past. Then, "motivated by pure altruism," German Director Volker Schlondorff (The Tin Drum), 44, agreed to "jump on the sinking vessel to try to save it." He focused on a single vignette from the book. English Actor Jeremy Irons, 35, and Italian Screen Siren Ornella Muti, 28, signed to play Swann and the courtesan he marries. The result, Un Amour de Swann (English version: Swann in Love), has opened in Paris, where it is a sensation, attracting intellectual controversy and long lines. Says Producer Stephane: "The miracle happened."

Granny! Jethro! Elly May! C'mon in from the cement pond and sit down for a spell. You remember Miss Jane Hathaway, who used to work down at the bank with Mr. Drysdale when they called us the Beverly Hillbillies? Now, Granny, keep your bonnet on. Anyways, it turns out that her real name is Nancy Kulp, 62, and don't this beat all: she's running for the United States Congress in the ninth district of her home state of Pennsylvania. I know it's hard to imagine that strait-laced woman as a liberal, but it says right here that she's come out against Mr. Reagan's environmental and fiscal policies and is "appalled by the nuclear buildup." Now here's the best part. The Republican that's been doing the job for the past twelve years, a Mr. E.G. ("Bud") Shuster, says that Miss Jane is going to bring out all her fancy Beverly Hills friends and turn the race into "Hollywood East." Well, that got her madder than a wet possum, I guess, 'cause she came right back saying that her campaign "won't be predicated on stars coming in, I'll tell you that." Oooo, dogie!

He is the veteran star of 126 films and Japan's most famous actor, but Toshiro Mifune, 63, is still known to American audiences by only a handful of movies, among them Kurosawa's Rashomon and the TV mini-series ShOgun. In spite of his relatively low profile in the U.S.--or perhaps because of it--Mifune was honored last week at the Japan Society in Manhattan, which was beginning an eight-week-long, 40-film retrospective of his work. He surprised his New York audience by appearing at the gala opening in the costume yabusame, a centuries-old ceremonial riding and archery exercise that he has practiced for 40 years. The actor, who is also adept at judo and kendo, seems to have aquired some of the humility of a Buddhist monk as well. Says he: "I'm not always in great pictures, but I'm always true to the Japanese spirit."

Every afternoon she emerges from San Francisco's Sacred Heart convent in shorts and T shirt and jogs for a minimum often miles. But for Sister Marion Irvine, 54, her 5 1/2 years of long-distance running is more than just healthy outreach to the postwimple age. Last December, the Dominican nun covered the 26-mile 385-yard course at the California International Marathon in Sacramento in 2:51.01. Thus by a scant .15 sec., she qualified for the Olympic trials, the oldest woman in the world to make the grade. Sister Marion is now training with her coach to compete in two months at the women's running trials in Olympia, Wash. "I won't win there," she admits. "But I'm going because I won the privilege of standing at the line with the greatest."