You've come a long way, flying nun. From that silly television series about a novice who had an airborne habit, Sally Field landed in a serious role as Norma Rae, the Southern mill hand with a heart of steel and an eye for her union organizer. Fresh from that Academy Award performance, Field is at work in the South again in an even more down-to-earth assignment. In Back Roads, now shooting in Mobile, Ala., she plays a hooker who falls in love with a down-and-out boxer and decides to travel cross-country with him. If her roles are becoming more elemental, life for Field herself is growing more complicated. "I'm used to being the last person cast," she says, reflecting on pre-Oscar days. "Now I have the next two years planned."
Ah, godiam, la tazza e il cantico, as the spirited Alfredo sings in La Traviata. "Oh, rejoice, with wine cup and singing." That's what Cary Grant, Charlton Heston, Angie Dickinson and other members of Hollywood's elite were doing last week at Chasen's restaurant as the stars twinkled out a little starstruck themselves to meet the town's newest celebrity: famed Tenor Luciano Pavarotti, a sometime Alfredo, who is about to take four months out of a schedule almost as fully packed as he is to star in Yes, Giorgio, a comedy about an Italian singer who falls in love with an American woman. Carol Burnett produced paper and pen for his autograph, Carroll O'Connor emerged from his Archie Bunker to demonstrate a sensitive knowledge of opera, and Grant, using the word that any Cary impersonator can deliver, told Pavarotti the film would be "terrific." Luciano, sipping Campari and soda, was as excited as the guests. "I didn't sleep all night," he insisted. "These people are all my idols."
Was it the lady or the tiger? That is, which became frightened by the lights at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas where Looking to Get Out was being filmed, and who looked—successfully—for a way to get out? Well, it wasn't Ann-Margret, who stars in the movie as a prostitute with a heavy past. She remained in focus along with Co-Stars Jon Voight, Burt Young, and the magic team of Siegfried and Roy. The tiger felt better out of the glare of the klieg lights and was only reluctantly coaxed back on camera. But the temporary escape made a nice publicity Bengal for the movie, so to speak.
The last time Actress Mariette Hartley, 39, had anything to do with current events onstage was when she won an oratorical contest at Staples High School in Westport, Conn., called "The Voice of Democracy." But guess who's coming to 8.4 million U.S. homes for breakfast, electronically speaking, for the next three weeks while Today show Hostess Jane Pauley goes off to marry and honeymoon with Cartoonist Garry Trudeau? Hartley, best known for her low-key and highly successful Polaroid camera commercials with James Garner, will handle interviews and other chores as Pauley's standin. "I'm using brain cells I haven't used since college," confesses she. Of more concern to the suburban Los Angeles mother of two is temporary life in a Manhattan hotel. "How do you wake up at 5 a.m., nap from noon until 3 and still have time for the kids?"