A PREGNANT PAUSE FOR DUNCAN--BUT 2 AND ONLY

Sandy Duncan, here with Tommy Tune in “My One and Only” at the Ahmanson, had just read the news in a Hollywood Reporter gossip column that she was leaving the show because she was pregnant when the phone rang.

It was her husband, dancer Don Correia, calling from New York.

To congratulate her? No. To mutter: “You better not be.”

The thing is that he’s in the show “Singin’ in the Rain” in New York and she’s been touring “My One and Only” for almost six months, so he was understandably bewildered.

Duncan herself was a little bewildered about the rumor. “Perhaps it’s because I left my last two shows (“Peter Pan,” “The Radio City Music Hall Show”) to have babies,” she said this week. “But this isn’t true; we decided two was quite enough--whatever the Hollywood Reporter may say.”

Blue-eyed Duncan, who had always planned to leave “My One and Only” next month, does her last show Sept. 15; Lucie Arnaz will take over for the rest of the tour. But it’s not the end of the Duncan-Tune team. They’re already planning a new show for next year, which she’ll produce and he’ll direct.

“Remember,” she said, “we’ve known each other 27 years. He was my first dance partner in Texas--I was 12. We did a lot of stuff on local TV.”

She’s also toying with some new television offers but, with the other project shaping up, has yet to commit to anything.

When she leaves the show, she plans to spend a week or two relaxing with her children--Jeffrey, 2 1/2, and Michael, 16 months--and seeing a lot of her husband.

“But I’ll soon get restless again,” she said. “I always do. See, I just love my work. I often wonder what people in those little Midwest towns who work hard and come home exhausted think when they hear actresses complaining about how hard it is to be in show business. Because really it’s a piece of cake, whatever anyone may tell you. . . . “

WAITING: Anyone who saw “The Stunt Man” knows that Richard Rush is one of the most innovative directors around.

But it is four years since that bravura piece of film making won him countless new admirers. What has he been doing since?

“Trying to get four wonderful properties off the ground,” the 55-year-old director said this week, “any one of which I have to believe will happen imminently.

“I love them all. Which may be the problem, because it’s a tradition in this industry that if you want to do something badly enough, you’re instantly suspect. Executives want to know why.”

Among the four projects are “Tom Mix and Pancho Villa,” for which he has Robert De Niro penciled in, and “Air America,” a story about the airline operated by the CIA during the Vietnam War.

Rush, an articulate and witty man, suspects that since “The Stunt Man,” he’s viewed in some quarters as an “artistic” director. “But I’m commercial too,” he said. “Before ‘The Stunt Man,’ every picture I made did well; ‘Getting Straight’ and ‘Freebie and the Bean’ were huge grosses. Even ‘The Stunt Man’ did OK, and would have done a lot better if it hadn’t had just a limited release.”

“Getting Straight” was made in 1970, “Freebie and the Bean” in 1975, “The Stunt Man” in 1980. “That’s five years between pictures,” he said. “So by next year something should happen with one of these new projects.” A wry smile. “I hope on an hourly basis.”

CHANGE OF PACE: Director Otto Preminger used to act. Director John Huston still does. And directors like John Landis and Paul Mazursky still pop up in pictures from time to time.

Latest to join the group is Czech-born Milos Forman, who won an Oscar for “Amadeus.” He has just been cast as a Yugoslav businessman in Mike Nichols’ movie, “Heartburn,” now shooting in Washington.

“I don’t think Mike asked me because of my great acting ability,” says Forman, “but we’re friends and he needed someone with an accent, so he picked me.”

NEW VENTURE: Ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov, who has tried his hand at acting (most recently “White Nights”), has decided he needs more than that to ensure a comfortable old age.

So he’s gone into the restaurant business, as the man behind the Red Baron restaurant in New York.

On the menu, no surprise, are such dishes as borscht, shashlik and chicken Kiev. “That’s to remind me of the old days in Russia,” he says.