It's 50 years since Harriet Stratemeyer Adams and Nancy Drew first met. To celebrate the anniversary, and the 58th adventure of the adroit adolescent detective, The Flying Saucer Mystery, her publishers tossed a mystery-theme party for Adams, who writes the Drew dramas as Carolyn Keene. At 87, the author is spry, but less timeless than her protegee. In half a century, Nancy has aged only two years, to 18, and done little more than change hair styles and add slacks and shorts to her swing-era sweater sets and pleated skirts. Despite a 50-year romance, Boyfriend Ned Nickerson is still allowed no more than a chaste kiss. That's because of another relationship equally uncharacteristic of modern times, alas. "I call her my fictional daughter," says Mrs. Adams. "And my fictional daughter always does and says what I tell her to."

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Coatless, tieless and triumphantly clutching his Best Actor Oscar, Dustin Hoffman could not resist a post-award press conference zinger at TV gossip Rona Barrett, who had dismissed Best Movie Kramer vs. Kramer as so much soap suds. Said he, spotting Barrett in the press crush: "Well, the soap opera won." Kramer swept five major prizes in the 52nd Academy Awards show. "I'm trying to hear the question over my heartbeat," cooed Meryl Streep, Best Supporting Actress as Ms. Kramer. Complimented on her Trigere gown, Streep, who is Mrs. Don Gummer in real life, blushingly swept a hand across her stomach and sighed: "It doesn't fit like it should since the baby." Sally Field was flushed with more than her victory as Best Actress for Norma Rae. Field, who had scarcely eaten for three days because of pre-Oscar nerves, sagged into bed next day with flu and a 102DEG fever. So many bouquets multiplied in her sickroom that she reported weakly: "It looks like a florist shop. Or a morgue."

The cast isn't mammoth, but the costumes are--prehistoric animal skins. The dialogue consists of 14 words. That's Caveman, shooting in Mexico and starring Ringo Starr. The film is a campy comedy about cavemen who between club fights make such momentous discoveries as fried eggs, cooked meat and gay sex. Lack of lines doesn't bother Ringo, who has made plenty of wordy but forgettable flicks since the Beatles broke up. "It's far more creative to be able to transmit all these feelings without words," says he, adjusting skins far different from those he pounded as a Beatlemaniacal drummer boy.

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As Britain's longtime touchstone of taste and guru of grace, he prided himself on the beau geste. So it was not surprising when the will of Sir Cecil Beaton, who died in January at 76, was read that a special friend had been singularly remembered. After monetary bequests and disposition of paintings, photographs and papers accumulated in a lifetime of photography, writing and theater, Beaton made another gift. To Actress Greta Garbo, now 74, who in the 1940s rebuffed Bachelor Beaton's tender of love and marriage, went a remembrance: an exquisite oil of one red rose, by an unknown 19th century Italian.

On the Record

Dimitrios Nianias, Greek Minister of Culture, lamenting the removal of 2,400-year-old figures from Athens' Acropolis: "They saw Plato, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, conquering Romans, the Byzantine era, so many wars. They survived all other catastrophes to be defeated by modern pollution."

Severiano Ballesteros, 23, Spanish golfer, on America after his Masters win: "Steak and potatoes good over here. And cornflakes in the morning."

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