Healthy Oldsters Put a New Wrinkle in Calendar Art

--Move over, Hugh Hefner. Residents of the Ring Nursing Homes in Springfield, Mass., are baring the truth about growing older--in a series of calendar pinups that are selling out almost as fast as Playboy’s Playmate of the Year issue. The first batch of 400 calendars for 1987 was snapped up almost immediately and the second printing of 400 calendars is going fast. “Miss April” is shown bowling before spectators in wheelchairs, while “Miss November” is posed demurely with a copy of National Geographic beneath her spectacles. Matthew J. Leahey, president of the two nursing homes, said the calendars, which feature both posed and candid shots of nursing home residents, were intended to show “the vitality, humanity and beauty that can exist in nursing home life.” The average pinup’s age is 85 and every wrinkle is untouched, Leahey said.

--So you found your neighbor’s cat when everyone else had given up. You’ve got a trench coat and you’ve been working on talking out of the side of your mouth. All you need is a run-down office in a seedy neighborhood and you’re a gumshoe, right? Hardly, according to Washington private eye Joel Kaplan, who teaches a night school class entitled, “A Career as a Private Detective.” Kaplan, a 20-year veteran of the trade who wears conservative suits and sips diet soft drinks, says Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled fictional detective Philip Marlowe is quite a few footsteps from reality. Ditto television’s “Magnum P.I.” “Everybody thinks they’re going to drive a Ferrari and travel to Hawaii and meet Tom Selleck.” In reality, Kaplan said, typical cases are more likely to run toward recovering repossessed automobiles than jewel-encrusted Maltese falcons. Trench coats and college degrees are not essential, he said, but a lack of a criminal record is. And, “you can’t have a red Ferrari,” he said. “The car needs to blend in.”

--”60 Minutes” correspondent Diane Sawyer has renewed her contract with CBS, ending speculation that she would be lured away by a rival network. A source at CBS, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the multiyear contract gives Sawyer an annual salary “in the million (dollar) range.” She reportedly had been earning $800,000 a year under her previous contract, which expires at the end of the week. Sawyer will continue to work on “60 Minutes” as well as “upcoming CBS projects,” according to CBS spokeswoman Ramona Dunn.