By Belinda Luscombe

WALLACE WAILS, FITZ HAS FIT

If you cross MIKE WALLACE in print, don't go anywhere near his turf. The gruff correspondent has been incensed by comments about himself and 60 Minutes in a new memoir by former White House flack MARLIN FITZWATER. Last week he learned that Fitzwater was preparing to tape an episode of Politically Incorrect in a leased cbs studio. After haranguing Fitzwater on the phone, Wallace turned up in person and, generously sprinkling his speech with obscenities, demanded a public apology. Fitzwater refused. And after Wallace finally left, Fitzwater left too, saying he was too flustered to go on with the show. "I was dumbfounded," says Fitzwater. "I didn't think there was anything in the book that could elicit that response." Oh? How about: "Mike Wallace has been destroying people on television for years" (page 223)? Back at the taping, desperate executive producer Scott Carter got Wallace to send a replacement guest: Morley Safer. He was fine, but as guest Jackie Collins, who arrived late, said, "I wanted to see the fight."

MEET AMERICA'S SCARIEST SALESMAN

It's an unofficial designation, recognized only by the real estate elite, but RALPH ROBERTS is the best-selling Realtor in America this year. By the end of October, the almost pathologically can-do salesman from Warren, Michigan, had sold more than 500 homes, priced on average at $115,000. He did it with the help of two car phones, a swarm of assistants to do the paperwork, and countless fridge magnets, flyers and referrals. Other techniques are less orthodox--and, alas, less tasteful. He sends out letters to people who are in foreclosure or going through a divorce. He lends buyers money. But most of all, he just loves to sell and sell and sell. His record: nine homes in a day. "I've had a passion for real estate almost from the day I was born," says the 38-year-old. And he spreads the passion around. "Ralph is so positive," says Stanley Mills, a big-selling Realtor in Tennessee. "When we get around him, we all get upbeat."

SEEN & HEARD

Tom Clancy, millionaire author and unlikely roue, has returned to his wife. In April Wanda Clancy filed for a legal separation from her spouse of 25 years, claiming she had been "abandoned and deserted" and that he had "committed adultery with one Katherine Huang, a.k.a. 'Bin Bin,' a.k.a. 'Ping Ping.'" But cute epithets were apparently not enough to hold the interest of Clancy, who met Huang, a Bronx assistant D.A., through a computer online service. He has moved back in with Wanda and begun to appear publicly with her.

These are grim times for the funny pages. Last year Gary Larson stopped drawing the Far Side cartoons, and now Bill Watterson is retiring Calvin and Hobbes. "I believe I've done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels," said the reclusive cartoonist in a letter to newspaper editors. "I am eager to work at a more thoughtful pace with fewer artistic compromises." Ah, well, there's always Peanuts.

THE SUN ALSO SETS

MARIEL HEMINGWAY got an Oscar nomination for her performance in Manhattan, but her role in the New York City-themed Central Park West has not been such a success, and she's leaving after 13 episodes. Producers' plans to rescue the dud show included tarting up Hemingway, who nixed the idea. "I liked my character as she was," she said. Now, having done enough telemovies for any woman, Papa's granddaughter wants to get back into comedy.