Seen, Heard, Said -- People

WEIGHTY TOPIC: That cheeky Geraldo Rivera, doing a twist on Oprah Winfrey's real-life weight wars, blimped up for a diet episode of his talk show. The lean Rivera put on 100 pounds the no-calorie, TV way, with the aid of cosmetics, foam, putty and weights. ``It took more than two hours for the transformation,'' he says. ``I refused to look in the mirror until it was finished. Then I was horrified. I recognized myself, but I wasn't at all sexy or dashing. I was like the Pillsbury doughboy. Cuddly. Soft. Safe. Silly. All the things I don't want to be.'' The episode, ``When the Fat Comes Back,'' airs today.

AH, WESTERNIZATION: Speaking of Geraldo: In a move that may be coldly calculated to sow doubts about the value of freedom among the Baltic republics, the Soviet Union will air a Russian-dubbed ``Geraldo'' on a daily basis beginning March 1. Nyet!

SACKED: Actress Cathy Lee Crosby has hit old boyfriend Joe Theismann with a $4.5 million suit accusing him of not living up to his promise to support her. In papers filed in Los Angeles, Crosby seeks a piece of the former Washington Redskin's 9.2-acre ranch in St. Croix and his condo in South Bend, Ind., hard by his alma mater, Notre Dame.

STRUNG ALONG: Eddie Van Halen has introduced the Edward Van Halen Guitar, which you'll be able to buy for just $1,599 in three months at a music store near you. ``I endorsed the guitar I used to play,'' said the rocker. ``I designed this one. Big difference.'' It may have other uses. His wife, Valerie Bertinelli, once said that Van Halen sometimes sleeps with his guitar in lieu of her.

WITH FEELING: What was actor Jim Nabors' reaction to getting a star - the 1,929th doled out - on the Hollywood Walk of Fame? ``Go-ol-ly!'' he said, using the catch phrase of the hayseed Gomer Pyle he played on television for so many years. Nabors, who portrayed Pyle on ``The Andy Griffith Show'' and ``Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.,'' critiqued the crowd's rendering of ``Go-ol-ly,'' saying they needed to give it more twang.

NEIGH-SAYER: Gary Cole, on playing Gen. George Armstrong Custer in an ABC-TV movie, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle: ``Somebody asked me the most difficult thing about playing Custer, and I tried to think of some philosophical or cosmic answer. But the most difficult thing is riding a horse to a mark and making him stay there.''

HIS THEORY OF EVOLUTION: Actor Robin Williams, telling Rolling Stone magazine about his cinematic progression: ``Oh, it's been a sequence. With `Good Morning, Vietnam,' people said, `Ah, at last he's found a way to be funny and still be a little restrained.' With `Dead Poets Society,' they went, `Oh, this is interesting - he's even more restrained.' And with `Awakenings,' it'll be `Look! He's medicated! He's gone even further. What's he playing next? He's playing a door. And after that? A black hole.' ''

NAKED TRUTHS: Jamie Lee Curtis says she has become suspicious of the director's stock refrain that clothing is the bane of great art. ``Almost every script I read has a nude scene,'' she tells US magazine. ``In `Blue Steel' there was a scene written where I was to make love and get out of bed naked, I go into another room and I'm naked, I go back and I'm naked, Ron Silver rapes me naked and I have the gunfight naked. I said NO WAY!''

Seen, Heard, Said appears Mondays through Fridays in the Scene section of The Times.