Winning hand? A pair of Jacks

Vanities

JACK NICHOLSON, the fellow with the eyebrows and the Laker tickets, can make a grand entrance with his voice alone. In A Few Good Scenes—sorry, A Few Good Men—you hear him before you see him, a low, unmistakable growl. Nicholson's Colonel Jessep is one of those crowd-pleasing turns that augur Oscar-night acceptance speeches. (The film holds you, and Tom Cruise and Demi Moore are good enough not to be upstaged by several excellent supporting performances.) In Hoffa, Nicholson is less recognizably Jack—but he's the star, so come March 29 he may well be called upon to follow his sunglasses up to the podium a second time. There's nothing like a juicy holiday-season role or two to make everyone forget Man Trouble—or Rebecca Broussard trouble. FAYE DUNAWAY, Nicholson's co-star in the peerless Chinatown, wants to extend the life span of the Leading Lady—for actresses in general, for herself in particular. In The Temp, opening this month, Dunaway plays the most glamorous baked-goods executive yet brought to the screen in 1993. It's a supporting role—the leads are Timothy Hutton and Lara Flynn Boyle—but those have served Jake Gittes well; Mrs. Mulwray deserves as much.

This month the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which doesn't really exist, will induct a clutch of new members into the void. The absence of a physical plant seems less, not more, disturbing with each passing year: after all, if the thing were built, it would be in Cleveland. Much better as a concept. The annual dinner is a movable feast now—New York abandoned for Los Angeles, Paul Shaffer yielding the baton to Robbie Robertson and Don Was, Hollywood sprinkled around the tables

with a heavier thumb. No change in the unofficial dress code: for aging rock stars, the tuxedo variant (Blackish Tie?) is never wrong. For what, in the end, is classier than pressed blue jeans, cummerbund, and bolo tie, accessorized with a Stratocaster? The only female performers inducted in the first seven years were Aretha Franklin, La Vem Baker, Tina Turner (with Ike), and the Supremes. In other words, 50 percent of the women in the Hall were famous for thrusting their arms forward and warbling "Stop! In the Name of Love"—and a significant 16.7 percent had published memoirs unflattering to Diana Ross. Those are tough qualifying standards. But now the Hall has tapped both RUTH BROWN and ETTA JAMES. The big-voiced James has a sizzling new R&B album on Elektra, featuring a duet with Steve Winwood (who needs to make just this sort of album himself). It's called The Right Time. Exacdy.

New Year's Eve is not the right time to scuffle over taxis with tipplers on Fifth Avenue. That can lead to expensive root-canal work. (And, unlike John Osborne, most of us didn't write Look Back in Anger and can't auction off the original manuscript at Sotheby's London just before Christmas to pay for a litde dentistry—which is just what the down-on-his-luck playwright has had to do.) Better to be far away. Where? Not Colorado. The private jets would normally be josding one another on Aspen's runway by now, but in passing Initia7 tive 2 and overriding gay rights in Denver, Aspen, and Boulder, the state may have solved the gridlock problem in a novel way: eliminating the planes. It will be interesting to measure the impact of Barbra Streisand's initial call for a boycott. Certainly she has forced some visible people to grapple with their consciences: Do I blithely spend money in a state that cast a reactionary vote? Or do I say, "No, I will not be a party to intolerance. I don't care if I just bought a new parka"?

Will Jack Nicholson go ahead and relinquish his post at L.A.'s Monkey Bar for his customary Aspen sojourn? What will Dick Ebersol and Susan Saint James, Jackson Browne, Donald Trump, Sylvester Stallone, and Richard Holbrooke, all of whom might normally be Telluride-bound, decide to do? Does this mean Mort Zuckerman won't be needing the Daily News delivered to his newly renovated Aspen home? Most tragic of all: is it curtains for Don and Melanie's annual New Year's Eve party?

Aspen will feel it is being unjustly punished. It does not have a notably intolerant reputation. After all, Hunter Thompson lives nearby. And the resort's P.C.-ness extends even to lighting fixtures: at the members-only Caribou Club, the lamps and chandeliers are made from "naturally shed" elk and caribou antlers. More to the point, the town voted with the angels on Initiative 2, and so in a sense can't be held responsible for the cretinous views espoused by much of the rest of the state's electorate. Still, majority rules. If Colorado is deprived of the presence of Sylvester Stallone or Donald Trump this season, it won't be Barbra Streisand's fault.

In Santo Domingo, Oscar de la Renta and wife Annette, the Kissingers and Erteguns and various Basses, will be marveling at Henry Kravis's new home in progress. Claudette Colbert and Pamela Harriman, who is evading a few biographers, should be among those hiding out in Barbados's Sandy Lane. And in Chris Blackwell's Miami Beach—the official name now—rumor has it that Barry Diller, David Geffen, and Madonna are planning a New Year's Eve party.

Of course, the hottest place to be is Hot Springs, Arkansas. Split a cab?

GEORGE KALOGERAKIS