Sadat guides Cronkite
On a 10-day trip to Egypt, Walter Cronkite had a knowledgeable guide, President Anwar Sadat, as he toured the temples of Luxor and Karnak and the tomb of Seti. Sadat also took the anchorman, whom he first met in 1970, on a barge ride on the Nile. All the sightseeing had a point; it was filmed for a CBS-TV news special, Sadat's Eternal Egypt, scheduled for June 28. Throughout the program the two men discuss politics and history. Sample: At the Philae Temple (above), built in the twilight years of ancient Egyptian civilization, Cronkite asks if all superpowers must fall. "It must be," declares Sadat. "It must be a cycle."
Fonda the fan
In her upcoming movie Nine to Five, Jane Fonda plays a secretary who teams with gal Fridays Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin in getting even with the boss. Elizabeth Wilson plays the office snitch paid to foil them. She got that part at Fonda's request and now is cast in a similar role as a touchy old maid in the Broadway hit Morning's at Seven. On Fonda's way to Maine to prepare to film On Golden Pond with her dad, Henry, and Katharine Hepburn, she visited backstage with Wilson and, teary-eyed, declared she was "wiped out" by the performance.
Keith cuts up
Keith Carradine won a 1976 Oscar for his laid-back Nashville song I'm Easy, but he also likes more frenetic sounds. In New York to line up film projects, he took in the premiere of Roadie, the rock movie starring Meat Loaf and Deborah Harry. At the Texas-style barbecue that followed (in an RCA Building banquet room yet), Keith was listening to the C&W sounds of Cleve and the Sweets when a fiddle solo roused him. He leaped up to cut a Rockefeller Center rug with his white bucks.
Ali in a clinch
"They call me the 'Dark Gable,' " says Muhammad Ali mischievously, now that he's grown a mustache. But he lacks some of the late actor's savoir faire. Can you imagine Gable getting his finger caught in a car window? That happened to Ali as he swept from a limo outside New Orleans' federal court. The Greatest was held fast when an electrically operated window closed on his hand. Inside, Ali faced a $20 million suit for alleged racist remarks about the white promoters of his 1978 Spinks fight in the Superdome. (He had publicly implied that the men were biased against blacks.) But Ali got out of that pinch too: The jury ruled in his favor.
Willie's outstripped
C&W singer Willie Nelson, 47, is so hipped on running that he sponsored a 6.2-mile event in Austin, Texas. Stripped to the waist, the Outlaw joined 1,000 competitors racing over the hills of the Pedernales Country Club (which he bought last year). Finishing, he asked, "Who won?" A spectator bellowed, "You did." No way. He ended up in the bottom third of the field, 34:45 off the winning time of 33 minutes flat.
Connery's blast-off
Although he refuses to play any more 007 parts, Sean Connery, 49, is not averse to scripts even farther beyond the fringe. In his next film, Outland, to be shot in England, he will appear as a lawman at a mining operation on another planet. However, before leaving for Britain he took a last whirl in L.A.'s social orbit, squiring David Janssen's widow, Dani (just a "friend" to married Sean), to a charity affair.
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