By Gary D. Garcia

"When people think of Dynasty," coos Linda Evans, 41, who plays Krystle Carrington, "they think of elegance." Right, so when the show's producers and stars think of the hit series, they think exploitation. And they are not talking cheap sleaze here, they are talking expensive. Fans who do not get enough of the upscale upsets that plague the Carrington family each week can now live as if they had taken up permanent residence next door to the oil-rich Denver denizens. Last week 20th Century-Fox Licensing Corp. unveiled the Dynasty T.V. Collection. Eventually the abundance of show-inspired products will range from tuxedos, lingerie, shoes and suits to household linens, china and a full line of jewelry going for $500 to $20,000 a bauble. In addition, and addition is the point, there will be a new perfume named for Krystle ($150 an ounce). On her own, Evans is lending her name to a new low-cal drink called Crystal Light. Won't all this crass commercialization muddy the good Carrington name? Nonsense, nothing sticks to the Carringtons. So why should this stuff?

Fifty years ago, she was lured from Broadway to cross the bridge and try her charms on the thriving sound stages in Queens, N.Y. Claudette Colbert made ten films there with the likes of Gary Cooper, Maurice Chevalier and Edward G. Robinson, while continuing to do plays. But the Astoria movie studio eventually faded away, and Colbert left the Big Apple for Hollywood glory. Last week the French-born actress was back in Queens for a day at the revamped Kaufman Astoria studio, where a renovated building with the largest sound stage outside Hollywood was named in her honor. "I feel sensational and really a little sentimental," said Colbert, who looked both. Indeed, it was hard to say which of her selves was lovelier as she delightedly encountered a cardboard cutout from her film Cleopatra, which she made at 29. Now 78, she is still working. This week she starts rehearsals in London with Rex Harrison, 76, for a West End revival of the 1923 comedy Aren't We All?

The 6-ft. 4-in. pitcher has a reputation as a fireballing righthander, but when fans wonder about the caliber of his rifle, they have the real thing in mind. Minnesota's Albert Williams (who opened the season, and lost, for the Twins last week) is the only known former Sandinista guerrilla in the major leagues. Back in 1977, when the Nicaraguan-born athlete was in the Pittsburgh Pirates farm system, the Somoza government declined to renew his visa. As a Twins guidebook laconically puts it, "This prompted Al to sign up with the Sandinista National Liberation Front guerrillas, and he was engaged in jungle fighting against the forces of Anastasio Somoza for the next 16 months." Williams confirms it all but politely declines to talk about those days or why and how he left (he has relatives still living in Nicaragua). "That's in the past," he says. "I live for the future."

The yarn began, or at least rebegan, two years ago when Samuel Marx, a story editor and producer at MGM, was looking through the studio's files and stumbled on an unpublished work by Graham Greene called The Tenth Man. The manuscript, a film treatment that was never pursued, was forgotten even by its creator. After a British publisher paid MGM $11,000 (plus royalties) for the right to print it, the horrified author considered trying to block publication. Then after rereading the tale of a wealthy Frenchman who escapes the Nazis by having someone else shot in his place, Greene changed his mind. "To my disquiet, I found it was really rather good," he says. "It is a short novel." Greene, 79, fixed up "a word here and there" and agreed to write an introduction for the book, which will appear next spring. Meanwhile, Producer Marx, 82, is still excited about his find and is trying to convince Hollywood that it will make as good a movie now as it would have 40 years ago.

--By Guy D. Garcia

On the Record

Yuri Lyubimov, 66, exiled Soviet stage director, who was recently ousted from his Moscow theater by authorities: "No foreign enemy, no matter how much he hated Russia, could possibly do the damage to our culture that these stupid little men have done."

Diana Vreeland, grande dame of fashion: "A little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika. No taste is what I'm against."

Tomas Borge Martinez, 54, Interior Minister of Nicaragua, on his country's Marxist government: "Class struggle can be seen either from the point of view of hate or from the point of view of love. State coercion is an act of love."