The Dispatch from Moline, Illinois • 62

1 -1 B-2 Tiir DISPATCH Moline. lilliwis Nov. 29, 1981 18 via eo concert Stones plan Dec. Liz Smith Gossip I RANDOM NOTES Geary star burns brightly A LIFE-SIZE bronze statue of John Lennon is standing in front of the Los Angeles City Hall. How long it'll be there and where it'll go next are in question.

Says sculptor Brett-Livingstone Strong: "If somebody wishes to buy it and donate it to Liverpool or give it to somebody else, it's available." Not so, say L.A. of-ficials, who maintain that the statue, when purchased, will belong to the city. The cost? $100,000. Wherever it ends up, Strong hopes it will be a safer spot; vandals have twice ripped off the granny glasses welded to Lennon's ears. "They may have been fans like myself," says Strong.

"I hope somebody took the glasses not out of spite but out of love." HEART HAVE gone into a Los Angeles studio to record their next album, this time with Jimmy Iovine (fresh from the Stevie Nicks smash LP) producing. "They wanted some direction," explains band associate Kelly Curtis, adding that Ann and Nancy Wilson had already penned "about 70 percent" of the disc's material. "I think they're gonna get back to their roots a little more. There'll be some real mellow stuff. They've got a song, which is just two guitars and Nancy and Howard (Leese) singing." Pleased with the responses they received at the Bread and Roses Festival and as the opening act for the Rolling Stones in Boulder, the group also hopes to lay a series of barely advertised gigs at small clubs.

"They just wanna have a couple of loose nights," says Curtis. The LP should be done by March, with a full fledged tour starting in April. Rolling Stone Magazine THE ROLLING STONES are planning to cap their 1981 U.S. tour on Dec. 18 in New York with a small-club date that will be simulcast via closed-circuit video to more than 200 other rock venues across the country.

"We are creating a show uniquely for video," touts the project promoter, John Scher. Titled "The Rolling Stones Rock Roll Party," the video event will be directed by Hal Ashby who shot footage of four of the tour's big concerts. Other performers who Scher says may participate in the event are Muddy Waters, Rick James, Grace Jones and Kid Creole and the Coconuts. Plans for the extravaganza were hatched last month in San Francisco, where Mick Jagger met with Ashby, Boz Scaggs, tour manager Bill Graham and various technical advisers to watch a test of the audio-visual equipment. As No Sisters, a hot local act, stormed through their songs at the Waldorf, Jagger and company caught the action on a video screen at a club next door.

Satisfied with the transmission's quality, Mick ventured over to the Waldorf, wading through the crowd and dancing to the young band's version of "Tossing and Turning." "You were great," he told the awe-struck band. "You did it just the way we would have not intimidated or anything. It was just what the doctor ordered." The cable concert Isn't the Stones' only stab at mixing rock roll, video and film this year. They're also planning a movie based on the tour as long as it's not just another in-concert opus. So when director Ashby asked if he could film some of the tour's concerts, he was told that he'd have to come up with a concept for the feature film above and beyond the standard documentary.

What's the concept? No one knows yet. But Ashby hopes to have an angle soon. BILL WYMAN happily signed autographs and chatted with the flock of teens who corralled him at a Philadelphia club recently only to get his ego shot down. At one point, "I noticed I was signing a Beatles album," the Rolling Stones' bassist recalls. "I couldn't figure out why they wanted me to sign that, but I did it anyway.

The next album was a George Harrison solo album, and I signed that, too. Then they started walking away, and one of the kids said, 'Thanks a lot, Undaunted by the stateside flop of his first solo single, "Je Suis un Rockstar," Wyman's set to release "Come Back Suzanne," which he describes as "a little bit Stonesy. This one hasn't got any cockney French on it." N.Y. Newsservice NEW STARS burn brightly and one of the hottest is "General Hospital's" Tony Geary, who portrays the genial rapist-hero on the daytime soap. Geary was at Studio 54 the other night with a girl who looked a little like (but wasn't) Shelley Duvall.

He was the most sizzling celebrity ever to grace the now all-white, all-night premises of America's best disco. They had to keep him surrounded by bodyguards and practically call out the Marines to move him in and out. FRANK SINATRA, the man who loves to hate most of the press, has outdone himself! His new album will be out next week and is a fantastic piece of work. Where to begin in talking about it? The LP is called "She Shot Me Down" and Sinatra sings the title song, written by Sonny Bono. But one of the best things on it is the 1938 standard, "Thanks for the Memory." Sinatra prevailed on composer Leo Robin, 83, to update the lyrics, which now refer to jets, smog, barbecue' and Las Vegas.

There's a wonderful new tune by Jule Styne, titled "Hey, Look, No Crying," plus two of the last works of the great Alec Wilder "South To a Warmer Place" and "A Long New in paperback Through the years with television The idea for this book was born, writes Jones, at a women's literature seminar, where a student, depressed by reading Sylvia Plath, asked, "Isn't there anything a woman can do but kill herself?" "Well," Jones quipped, "she can always kill somebody else," and suddenly she realized it was true. The book is not a stridently feminist defense of women who have killed. Instead, it is a serious and fascinating study of crime and its social connections, with feminist implications, to be sure, but no polemic. That she relies heavily on famous cases Lizzie Borden, Alice Crimmins, Jean Harris and others makes the book all the more accessible. "A Choice of Days," by H.L.

Mencken (Vintage, In an abridgment of three autobiographical works "Happy Days," "Newspaper Days" and "Heathen Days" Mencken can be seen in all his tarnished glory: his irreverence (on William Jennings Bryant: "a somewhat greasy man with his mouth his prejudice are only two kinds of music: German music and bad his impatience with hypocrisy average citizen of a democracy is a goose-stepping ignoramus and his political cynicism average democratic politician, of whatever party, is a scoundrel and a and his enthusiasm (on his accidental discovery of "Huckleberry "probably the most stupendous event of my whole life 61.6 percent of American TV sets tuned in; only "I Love Lucy" would ever surpass it, with 67.3 in the 1952-53 season), 43 spinoffs In" from "The Jeffersons," "The Jef-fersons" from "All in the TV series that came from radio (more than 200, of which "Meet the Press" and "Face the Nation" survive), song hits from television Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb" from "77 Sunset and a 50-page index: "Independent Journey: The Life of William O. Douglas," by James E. Simon (Penguin, Douglas served longer (36 years on the Supreme Court) than any other justice and was one of the most enigmatic men in the court's history. A brilliant jurist, tirelessly dedicated to the causes of the poor, the downtrodden and the despised, he could be cruel to his wives, indifferent to his colleagues and brutal to his clerks. Four attempts by conservatives to impeach him failed, as did three of his four marriages.

In his last days on the court, crippled by a stroke and officially retired, he became a nuisance, but he had long since become a heroic symbol of faith in the power and dignity of the individual. Simon, a professor of constitutional law at New York Law School, has written the best book yet on Douglas, balanced, learned and uncommonly readable. "Women Who Kill," by Ann Jones (Fawcett Columbine, TONY GEARY By CLARENCE PETERSEN Chicago Tribune Service "The Complete Directory to Prime-Time Network TV Shows, 1946-Present," by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh (Ballantine, In 1946 there were four television networks ABC, CBS, NBC and DuMont but only NBC and DuMont were active, and prime-time TV consisted of just 18 shows a week, including two two-hour "Gillette Cavalcade" of Sports" boxing telecasts. With shows like "Let's Rhumba," "Cash and Carry," and one newscast, the twice-weekly "Esso Newsreel" on NBC, it was decidedly not the golden age of television. The very next season, TV got significantly better with the debut of "Kraft Television Theatre." The rest, as they say, is history, and it's all in this revised and enlarged edition of an already successful volume (winner of a 1980 American Book Award).

In addition to listing every prime-time commercial TV network series and the best known syndicated series Hunt," for one), with dates, synopses, history and credits, the book contains prime-time schedules for every year, Emmy awards from 1948 (where there was one, for "The Necklace" as best film made for television), the 15 top-rated shows for each season since 1950 (when "Texaco Star Theater" with Milton Berle was No. 1 with an astonishing FRANK SINATRA A certain flair in Niven 9s first novel I it. pain and immeasurable sadness. The emotional realities that only a physical life and death struggle can bring leap off the page and into the reader's heart. Although the ending is nowhere near as powerful, it is amusing.

The supporting characters are all vivid and each adds a bit more to the overall tapestry. Interestingly, and perhaps because he is an actor, Niven uses character rather than plot or description to advance his story and intrigue his readers. "Go Slowly, Come Back Quickly" is a pleasure to read. David Niven has a new career that hopefuly he will follow unflaggingly. As many novels as he has yet unwritten will be eagerly awaited.

People Versus Kirk, by Robert Traver moves forward without undue sensationalism or prurient pandering. As an actor Niven is scintillating and precise, a true cosmopolitan and these qualities carry over to his writing. With a purposeful flair, he takes his young hero to England and adventure. In an author's note, Niven gives the reply of a world famous author when asked for advice: "Well, you could perhaps tell a story giving it a beginning, a middle and an end." Niven's beginning is a trifle slow, the middle terrific, and the ending more than a bit weak. The middle takes place in England during the second world war and is immensely powerful.

It is here that the writing solidifies and the surface sparkle becomes crystalline. Blitzed England comes alive, vibrating with joy, United Press International Go Slowly, Come Back Quickly, by David Niven (Doubleday, $14.95) David Niven has turned his not-inconsiderable talent as a raconteur from entertaining his friends to what he does best, entertaining the public. Much beloved as an actor whose career has soared over four decades of American film, he has regaled his infatuated public with two editions of memoirs: "Bring on the Empty Horses" and "The Moon's a Balloon." Both bestsellers, his first novel, "Go Slowly, Come Back Quickly" should follow their lead with no trouble. The luscious leg on the jacket is a perfect herald of the delights to come between the covers. Stani Skolimowsky, an American of Polish descent, begins the Jeremiah Dundee, wish to plead "impaired consciousness" as their defense and to hypnotically retrieve Kirk's memory in an effort to probe for the truth.

There ensues a long, tedious give-and-take between them, the Hugh Salter, who hopes to induce the hypnotic trance, the prosecuting attorney, and the judge. Lurking in the background is the bereaved husband who, oddly enough, remains friendly to Kirk. There are endless references to the mahogany in the courtroom, to the game of cribbage, to the overwhelming desire of attorney Ludlow to go fishing. During the proceedings, blue-haired women with pink curlers sit among the spectators. We believed this species to be extinct.

If they're not they should be at least in fiction, and so should words like "pard," "wups," and "dames." Gad! Maybe we've watched too many Perry Mason reruns. Or maybe we weren't intrigued by the trial and all its trite characters because the true guilty person was so obvious from the start. (St. Martin's Press $12.95) Twenty-three years ago, a former Michigan Supreme Court justice handed down a courtroom drama that was widely acclaimed, was chosen as a major book club selection, and held the top of the best-seller lists across the country for many weeks. "Anatomy of a Murder" was hailed as "enormously detailed," "a racy and rousing novel," and was made into an Otto Preminger film starring Jimmy Stewart.

It sold nearly 200,000 copies in hardcover alone and set the pace and style for many imitators. Oh, yes, it sold for $4.50. Well, times have changed. The same former justice, using the same pseudonym, now has attempted to repeat this success. Randall Kirk, it would seem, has killed his beautiful, wealthy, married mistress, Constance Spurrier.

The housekeeper, who discovers the dead woman lying on the beach, testifies she saw him do it. All the evidence points to the young bachelor's guilt, but Kirk can't remember anything about the night of the crime. His attorneys, Frederic Ludlow and his partner DAVID NIVEN book as a high school football hero with an A natural state of affairs for a teenage football player looking forward to a date with the prettiest cheerleader. Sophistication and discretion, not voyeurism, mark the sexual sequences and the plot Night." You also won't want to miss Steve Sondheim's marvelous freshly-minted "We Had a Good Thing Going" from the musical "Merrily We Roll Along," which has just opened at the Alvin in New York. This one will be released as a single; it's only fabulous.

The whole album is. Ah yes, the talented Frank Sinatra too bad he is so dedicated to being hard to get along with. HOW-QUICKLY-THEY-FORGET department: George Savalas, the adorable detective Stavros of "Kojak," is now toiling as a cookware salesman in Sherman Oaks. Telly's brother shrugs, "I took my present job because show business offers practically disappeared after the series ended." The irony is that we don't forget the series may have ended, but it ise stinll seen everywhere on the tube in reruns and is one of the most compelling entertainments TV has to offer. There is talk of reviving "Kojak" as an occasional feature movie special.

THIS SPACE told you recently how Irving Mansfield is getting ready to write the official biography of his late wife, Jacqueline Susann. But now comes word from Morrow that feminist writer Barbara Seaman is prepping a book on Jackie to be published in the fall of 1984 on the 10th anniversary of the writer's death from breast cancer. Barbara has completed 200 interviews already and says she believes she has "started to penetrate" the remarkable character of the complex and gifted Susann, "a woman no one knew." THIS IS A JOB for Ernestine! Marlene Dietrich read "Fonda My Life," as told to Howard Teichmann. She said it was the best biography in years and dialed the Teichmann house from Paris. Teichmann was out and she got Henry Fonda's voice on the answering service.

Then she tried to phone Teichmann at the Beverly Hills Hotel, but upon giving her name, the operator said, "We do not put through practical joke and prankster calls to people registered here!" The phone clicked off. In desperation, Dietrich called Fonda in Bel Air, expressed her joy over the book and her frustration over making trans-Atlantic calls. "Why is it so hard to speak to people in America these days?" Dietrich asked Shirlee Fonda. LOTS OF TALK about what John Travolta might do, but here's what he wants to do the life of the' late singer Jim Morrison of the Doors. Hmmmm, wonder if Travolta has seen Morrison's graffiti-covered gravestone in the Pere Lachaise cemetary of Paris? Mary Steenburgen was at the premiere of "Ragtime" with her "Melvin and Howard" director, Jonathan Demy.

Her hubby, Malcolm MacDowell, is trapped in Los Angeles beginning "Blue Thunder" with Roy Scheider. THE GAG at ABC-TV was that the astronauts returned early in the space shuttle in order to see Luke and Laura's wedding and catch Elizabeth Taylor on "General Hospital" Mary Martin took a slow boat to Rio and en route she'll celebrate the 75th birthday of her constant companion, onetime press agent Ben Washer. Mary returns in January, hoping to resume her PBS TV interview show The negotiations of all concerned on the coming new version of the Today Show (as in when Tom Brokaw departs) are said to be so complicated that it's taking NBC forever to iron things out. Every person concerned wants his or her prerogatives exactly spelled out for the future. It's kind of funny in a way, except for NBC, the lawyers and the agents involved.

Theirs is the Excedrin headache Paul Newman is really on the warpath with that New York afternoon paper. He calls it "a rag" at every opportunity and insists to reporters, "I want you to print this exactly. I want to see it as I've said it. The Post is disgraceful!" (Paul is living his "Absence of Malice" role, I guess. COMING ATTRACTIONS: Suzanne Pleshette and hubby Tom Gallagher III are about to grace the Big Apple.

They've taken an apartment here because her rehearsals begin Dec. 14 for "Special Occasions" a Bernard Slade play with two actors, three revolving stages, four musicians and five producers (Morty Gottlieb has given shares to his longtime production team.) Richard Mulligan will co-star and the play opens at the Music Box Feb. 7. Suzanne, one of the unsung big talents of our time, in my humble opinion, was last seen on Broadway in "The Miracle Worker." New Eric Ambler thriller tion. From them the reader learns much, such as the great versatility of talents displayed by Thomas Jefferson, and the sharp wit of Abraham Lincoln, of whom National best sellers FICTION Cujo Stephen King Indecent Obsession Colleen McCullough No Time for Tears Cynthia Freeman Hotel New Hampshire John Irving Remembrances Danielle Steel Noble House James Clavell The Cardinal Sins Andrew M.

Greeley Legacy Howard Fast God Emperor of Dune Frank Herbert Third Deadly Sin Lawrence Sanders NON-FICTION Never-Say-Diet Book Richard Simmons How to Make Love to a Man Alexandra Penney The Lord God Made Them All James Herriot Light in the Attic Shel Silversteln Elvis Albert Goldman Beverly Hills Diet Judy Mazel Cosmos Carl Sagan Weight-Watchers 365-Day Menu Cookbook Dear Abby Abigail Van Buren Pathfinders Gail Sheehy I Me Mine George Harrison Associated Press The Care of Time, By Eric Ambler. Farrar, Straus Giroux. 277 Pages. $11.95. Eric Ambler's new thriller, "The Care of Time," has a terrific opening.

"The warning message arrived on Monday, the bomb itself on Wednesday. It became a busy week." That's enough right there to send the expectant reader charging along. But the enthusiasm begins to wane, the charge to slow to a walk when the reader begins to find that the promise of those opening sentences is not being sustained, that this so-called thriller lacks thrills. The plot, which Ambler has to stretch and strain at times in order to make it work, deals with a writer named Robert Halliday. Halllday, whose work has made him moderately famous, is the chap who gets that bomb mentioned in the opening sentence.

It doesn't go off, by the way. The man who sent it, a soldier-of-fortune named Zander, doesn't want to kill Halliday, he just wants to get his attention. He does. It seems that Zander wants Halliday to act as a front for a deal he is trying to work out between his client, an Arab potentate, and NATO. The potentate is willing to give NATO a location for an important mideast base in return for certain considerations.

But he doesn't want his fellow rulers to know he is dealing with the West, so Zander is using Halliday to mask the real deal by pretending to interview the potentate for television. This is as confusing as it sounds, and it gets even more so when a contract is put out on Zander by a Mideast version of Murder only that he disappeared and a half-hearted search by authorities begins while the remaining three are wracked by guilt. Unfortunately, too much of this book is stuck in stereotypes and contrived situations. None of the characters is truly sympathetic and the book sometimes plods along, never making the game as real to us as to the players. Presidential Anecdotes, By Paul F.

Boiler Jr. Oxford University Press. 410 Pages. $14.95. Throughout history, U.S.

presidents have said and done some pretty funny things, intentionally and unintentionally. Several hundred quips from and anecdotes about all our chief executives have been culled and compiled Into this unusual and entertaining volume. Some examples: When William Taft, who weighed 300-plus pounds, was in the Philippines, he cabled Secretary of War Elihu Root, "Took long horseback ride today; feeling Replied Root, "How is the horse?" When Calvin Coolidge became president in 1923, "the country wanted nothing done and he done When writer Dorothy Parker was told of the sudden death of the less-than-energetic ex-president, she quipped, "How can they tell?" President Ulysses Grant admitted to being so tone deaf that he knew "only two tunes. One of them is 'Yankee Doodle' and the other isn't." Each president's collection of witticisms is preceded by a short biographical summary which serves to establish the character of the man and his administra Inc. It all gets properly sorted out by closing time, but by then the reader doesn't much care.

Mazes and Monsters, By Rona Jaffe. Delacorte. 329 Pages. $13.95. About two years ago a young man disappeared from a Midwest university.

He had been involved in a fantasy role-playing game known as "Dungeons and Dragons" and, initially, authorities thought the young man had taken the complex game of battles, treasures and magic spells all too seriously. When the young man finally emerged no one had determined just what effect the game had had on his life. His game-playing friends were still silent. This incident provides the basis for Rona Jaffe's new novel, which, unfortunately, doesn't quite live up to its poignant potential. The game here is "Mazes and Monsters" and four students, three men and a woman, escape the frustration of college life in a quiet Pennsylvania town by plotting, planning and playing' the game.

To heighten the realism, the four start to truly act out their fantasy roles by playing in nearby caves that have been closed to the public. The game of magic and power creates a bond between them and they never think the new setting would blur the line between reality and fantasy. But for one player, whose older brother had long ago run away and disappeared, his role as holy-man-healer overcomes him and he disappears into this other self, going on a quest for the missing sibling. Hisifriends, fearing he has died fn the cave, tell police one observer remarked, "He could make a cat la i jh!" Shadow of Cain, By Vincent Bugliosi Ken Hurwitz. Norton.

309 Pages. $12.95. Here, from the author of "Helter Skelter," is a what-if-a-mass-murderer-is-paroled novel. Haunting and thought-provoking, "Shadow of Cain" examines violence in American society at a level that is usually avoided. The novel revolves around the release of a murderer on parole, his re-entry into society and the reassertion of the mental state that led to the killings.

The authors are eminently capable in writing this book. Vincent Bugliosi was the prosecutor of Charles Man-son in the bizarre Tate-LaBianca murders. In addition to his bestseller about the case, he teamed ifp with Ken Hurwitz previously to write, "Till Death Us Do Part," another bestseller. In "Shadow of Cain," Ray Lomak coldly executes six high-school classmates In 1959. He is paroled 21 years later, a born-again Christian, only to be met by scorn and, in some cases, attempts on his life.

When Lomak is befriended by a multimillionaire former film star, he starts on a road of self -justification that eventually leads to two grisly murders. The only check that society has on Lomak throughout this development is a state-appointed psychiatrist. Richard Pomerantz reluctantly undertakes the role and, in the end, it proves personally costly. Q-C best sellers ELIZABETH TAYLOR (not a day goes by without our Miz Liz fix) asked for and got Joe Namath to appear with her on NBC's Nov. 22 Bob Hope special.

I have to reserve several lines for the title "Bob Hope's Stand Up and Cheer for the National Football League's 60th Year An All-Star Comedy Salute to America's Number One Spectator Sport." Gad! How do I know this? Why, Namath himself leaked it when I asked for his autograph up at New York's glamorous Terrace restaurant overlooking the George and Martha Washington Bridge. (Joe always gives autographs, even when bores come up to him in the middle of dinner.) ALL THE PEOPLE in "Sophisticated Ladies" are so talented. It's too bad the musical has been plagued by some missed performances and other misdemeanors. The terrific Phyllis Hyman was being considered for the West Coast company, but now the part will go to Deedee Bridgewater. HARDCOVER FICTION Cujo The Cardinal Sins The Hotel New Hampshire HARDCOVER NON-FICTION The Beverly Hills Diet The Lord God Made Them All The Never-Say-Diet Book PAPERBACK FICTION The Key to Rebecca The Ring Love Play PAPERBACK NON-FICTION The Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube 101 Uses for a Dead Cat Color Me Beautiful.