PEOPLE

Lady Bird Johnson, on a recent visit to Washington, reported that the former President is in pretty good shape. He has been dieting and swimming and his weight is down, but so far he has not made it to the golf course. "He says he's waiting for sunny weather and someone he's sure he can beat."

Charley Britt, once a defensive back for the 49ers, Vikings and Rams, has just made his ballet debut, partnering Kristin Nelson (All-America Tom Harmon's oldest daughter) in a performance of La Création. Britt has done some acting, but ballet is new to him. His role in La Creation was that of Living Sculpture, a relatively undemanding one, as the name implies, but he rehearsed patiently for a month and a half, and will dance whenever the newly formed Ballet Society of Los Angeles performs the ballet again. "It is surprising how interested you can get in ballet," he has said. "I consider it a sport. It's strenuous, and there is nothing effeminate about it. It's really like football, a little, except you have to point your toes."

It certainly is a surprise to hear the word "fan," meaning a fondness for baseball, used in connection with Sally Rand. It was spring in Florida, however, and Miss Rand appropriately recalled that she and Casey Stengel had attended the same high school in Kansas City, Mo. "Of course, he was ahead of me," she was careful to point out, "but after World War I he came back for some time to go to dental school, and I dated him." Miss Rand then offered her predictions for the coming baseball season. In the National League the Dodgers are going to win in the western division and St. Louis in the eastern; in the American League it will be the Angels in the West, the Yankees in the East; and the Dodgers are going to beat the Angels for the pennant.

Miss Rand's great expectations for the eastern division of the American League may cheer the new Bishop of Albany, N.Y. In an interview he gave the other day Bishop Edwin Broderick spoke briefly of his days as a pitcher for various semipro teams around the Bronx, and of his current baseball interests he said, "I'm still a Yankee fan, and God knows that's a hard thing to be these days."

Whatever "...all the rights, privileges, preeminences, immunities and advantages to the degree of baron" may be these days, they belong now to Learie Constantine. As a young man Constantine was one of the world's best cricketers, but it is for his work in race relations that he has just been installed as the first black member of ling-land's House of Lords. The new Baron Constantine of Maraval in Trinidad and Tobago and of Nelson in the County Palatine of Lancaster hasn't been in the best of health lately and doesn't plan to commentate on cricket matches this year as he did last. "I follow with interest Rugby, football, tennis and boxing," he says, "and together with being rector of St. Andrews [Scotland] University, a member of the Race Relations Board and a governor of the BBC, I keep pretty busy."

Houston Heavyweight Dave Zyglewicz is scheduled to fight Joe Frazier next month, and it has been suggested that if he wins he should capitalize on his fame by opening a chain of hot-dog stands. But what do you call a hot-dog stand if your name is Zyglewicz? The choice has narrowed down to Ziggly Wiggly or Ziggy's Piggies.

As the story went, society writer and animal lover Cleveland Amory was golfing with Writer Norman Cousins at the Dorado Beach Hotel in Puerto Rico when he hooked a tee shot which headed for a water hazard, only to be saved when it bounced off a stray dog. Thus alerted to the problem of stray dogs in Puerto Rico, Amory was supposed to have approached San Juan's Mayor Carlos Romero Barcelo and Governor Luis Ferré to enlist their aid in raising money for a shelter. The latter bit is true. As for the former, Cousins says, not quite true. Amory saw the stray wandering, sick, along a highway, picked it up and smuggled it into his hotel room, nursed it back to health and took it home to New York. "If Cleveland had hit a dog on the course," Cousins said, "he would have thrown away his clubs and gone down on his knees to ask for forgiveness, and he would never have played golf again."

Actress Eileen Heckart has purchased some quilted Macbeth costumes from the Stratford (Conn.) American Shakespeare Festival Theatre. She plans to use them for ski jackets.

President Nixon may have shown little interest in splashing around his own pool (SI, March 31), but Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada was positively eager. He arrived at the White House at 5:15, and for two hours he and Bud Wilkinson swam laps, showered, took sauna baths and were massaged, all in all a very healthy way to spend what is ordinarily the cocktail hour in Washington, D.C.

In a recent interview Mrs. Bo Belinsky revealed, to no one's particular astonishment, that she hasn't cooked a meal since her marriage last fall. "I'm not the domestic type," former Playboy Playmate Jo Collins explained, and added, "It ruins the whole mood if you have to get up and cook."

TWO PHOTOS