Garbage Throat
Would bad language ever pass the lips of Shirley (Save-It-for-the-Wed-ding-Night) Feeney? Well, not on her ABC hit Laverne and Shirley, but Cindy Williams, who plays Feeney, did cut loose in First Nudie Musical, an R-rated Paramount flick in the can before that TV series was ordered up. And now St. Paul Dispatch columnist Bill Diehl has publicly deplored Cindy's "hungry decision" to appear in a "tasteless, disgusting, revolting" film. Dubbing her "little Miss Garbage Mouth," Diehl wonders "what her newfound fans would do upon hearing her spit out words such as that four-letter expletive for human excrement." Cindy's reaction to the sermon? " Oh, 'human excrement!' "

Flesh Wound
Nelson Rockefeller says his running days are over, but show the four-time New York governor a crowd, and he reflexively begins pressing the flesh. In Chicago recently, the Vice-President was strolling through a hotel with GOP state gubernatorial nominee James ("Big Jim") Thompson when he spied a gaggle in the lobby. Dragging Thompson over by the arm, Rocky beamed, "I'd like to introduce you to the next governor of Illinois." An amused Thompson replied, "I'm afraid you won't get any votes here," before introducing the Veep to the wife of Michael Howlett, his Democratic opponent in November.

Knock Off
As black sheep Tom Jordache, actor Nick Nolte stole ABC's smash mini-series Rich Man, Poor Man. The network originally calculated that Susan (Towering Inferno) Blakely would emerge as the star of the 12-hour Irwin Shaw adaptation and casually allowed Nick's character to be killed off in the two-hour finale which finished No. 2 in the weekly Nielsens. Now the network wants to spin Rich Man, Poor Man into a series next fall and came up with a cute way to resurrect Nick: he would play Tom Jordache's son. But Nolte, 35, has been plied with so many feature film possibilities that he's said no thanks.

Two Beauties
"With actors, it is easy to meet," says Italian star Giancarlo Giannini (of Swept Away...and Seven Beauties) by way of explaining his cross-country U.S. promotion tour with Marisa Berenson, who had nothing to do with the picture being promoted. After hooking up at a U.N. bash in New York, she threw her dozen bags in with his and hit L.A. and San Francisco (where "the spaghetti stood up on its plate," sighs Giannini) in seven days. Through an interpreter, Giannini denied a romance with Berenson and, for once unscripted by Lina Wertmuller, headed back to Rome to his wife and two kids.

Dog Day Night
When ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov defected from Russia, he sadly had to leave his beloved white poodle behind. So last Christmas, a friend gave him a championship black poodle he named La Goulue (it translates "the glutton" but the name actually comes from a Toulouse-Lautrec subject). But in San Francisco recently, while Mikhail and pet were staying with his fellow émigré ballerina Natalia Makarova, the beast vanished through an open door. Though several thousand posters were circulated and Baryshnikov offered a $300 reward and then upped the ante to a free dance performance, the poodle remained lost. Finally, someone at the SPCA discovered the bitch languishing in one of the kennels. Just in time, too—one more dog day afternoon, and La Goulue would have been put up for adoption or, if unclaimed, put down in the vacuum chamber.

Furthermore

•Chris Evert's magnificent competitive career is over—she's pregnant. Winner of $551,063 in her last full season, the onetime championship filly has been serviced by Secretariat and retired to stud.

•When White House chief of staff Richard Cheney clumped into the Oval Office the other morning with a cast on the leg he'd broken in a fall, President Ford greeted him with a smile and a crack: "I thought I was supposed to be the clumsy one."

•Impresarios often thank stars who fill their tills by giving them jewelry. But songstress Olivia Newton-John is getting half-ton baubles. After setting a Houston Astrodome record, the country star, whose hobby is riding, was presented with a chestnut quarter horse. That brings her stable of nags donated by promoters to seven.