AM I GETTING PAID FOR THIS?

When she first embarked on an acting career, fresh out of Sarah Lawrence in the late Fifties, Betty Rollin was only marking time (like other women, then) until the Right Man turned up. About the only hint of feminism-to-come was her stubborn refusal to settle for a secretarial job--a legacy from her intensely supportive Jewish mother. But now, nearly 25 years and three ""glamorous"" careers later, she sees it all a little differently. She eventually got her man (a professor) all right, and she enjoys married life; but somewhere along the way, it was the work that ""became like love."" And why not? Though the original career didn't pan out, her own pluckiness plus college contacts enabled her to become first a magazine editor (at Vogue and, more blissfully, at Look); then a network news correspondent; then (simultaneously) the author of First, You Cry (1976), the well-received account of her mastectomy. (Mary Tyler Moore portrayed her in the TV movie.) Rollin, an amusing raconteur, deftly sketches the oddball editors, wary celebrity interviewees, and arbitrary TV execs of her acquaintance. (As an interviewee, Johnny Carson was uptight; Bob Hope's style was ""pure red-neck, slurs and smirks intact."") But she's also a sheer delight as a woman. One foot in the Old World, terrified for years of being unmasked for ""bluffing"" competence, broken both physically and emotionally by an early romance, she nevertheless managed to bound back from each setback with a better job, a better outlook, and--now in her forties--a certain amount of contentment and wry self-amusement. Pizazz, wit, and style--plus a noble twist on the Cinderella ending: even a fairy godmother couldn't ask for more.