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Perhaps Savitch was beginning to sense that she might never be fully admitted to the magic circle: Rather, Brokaw, Jennings. But she did not relent. Last year the newscaster published a Pollyanna autobiography, Anchorwoman, that seemed like an extended press release. Says Barbara King, who helped her with the book: "She thought if she could renew the old glory, one of the networks would offer a bigger and better job." None did, but a new deal with NBC reportedly raised her salary to nearly $500,000; the network was considering her as a substitute on Today during Jane Pauley's upcoming maternity leave and as a principal reporter of the 1984 political campaigns.
Friends say she was full of plans again. She was finding happiness with her new boyfriend, Martin M. Fischbein, 34, vice president and assistant general manager of the New York Post. A week ago last Sunday, the couple left a restaurant in the Bucks County resort town of New Hope, Pa. It was 7:15 p.m., and they had not been drinking. Moments later, in a heavy downpour, Fischbein apparently mistook a poorly marked towpath for the restaurant parking-lot exit. His rented station wagon tumbled some 15 feet into the water-and mud-filled Delaware Canal, coming to rest upside down. When the car was discovered four hours later, Fischbein was still strapped behind the wheel, and Savitch, along with her pet Siberian husky, lay in the back seat, drowned.
SENTENCED. Truman Capote, 59, author (In Cold Blood) and sardonic, falsetto voice of the glitterati; to three years probation and a $500 fine for drunken driving; in Southampton, N.Y. Capote had been driving with an expired out-of-state license, and the Long Island judge barred him from applying for a New York State driver's license for six months. The judge also directed the writer to continue alcoholic counseling. Said Capote: "I pleaded guilty to this thing to get it out of the way, even though I know I wasn't drunk."
INJURED. Jerry Dunphy, 62, $450,000-a-year anchorman of Los Angeles' most popular local news program (KABC-TV's Eyewitness News); when four gunmen in an Oldsmobile pulled alongside his Rolls-Royce convertible and opened fire on him and his companion, Studio Makeup Artist Sandra Marshall, 36; in Hollywood. Dunphy, who is resting comfortably in the hospital, was struck by a bullet in his neck and one in his left arm; Marshall was shot in her right arm. At week's end no motive for the ambush had been discovered.
DIED. Rodolfo Siviero, 72, Italy's national art sleuth whose life mission was to recover his nation's stolen treasures, particularly those pilfered by the Nazis; in Florence. An agent of the underground Italian resistance during World War II, Siviero traced at least 2,000 works of art throughout the world in his lifetime, and saw that they were safely returned. Next year the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence will open a special museum with 200 pieces of Italian art, mostly paintings, that the relentless Siviero recovered after they vanished from the looted, private collections of Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring.