LOS ANGELES, Jan. 2 – Leslie Van Houten, facing retrial for two of the notorious Manson murders, stood quietly in Los Angeles Monday while her attorney told a judge she is “thoroughly rehabilitated” and “no danger to society.”

But attorney Maxwell Keith failed to win the $50,000 bail figure which would have permitted her release five years after she, Charles Manson and two other women were convicted of murder.

Superior Court Judge Jack E. Goertzen, who scheduled the trial tentatively for Jan. 28, set bail at a high $200,000. He suggested that could be lowered if Keith presents evidence of Miss Van Houten’s exemplary behavior in prison.

“In the opinion of authorities,” Keith said, “she has thoroughly rehabilitated herself and presents no danger to society. If anything, there may be a danger to her.”

He added, “I represent that her attitude has changed totally.”

In contrast to her bizarre rantings during the 1970 Manson trial, Miss Van Houten, now 27, was subdued and polite on Monday. She answered all questions in a soft voice and was neatly attired in a green skirt and beige tweed sweater.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen Kay, an assistant prosecutor on the original Manson trial, argued against low bail, saying it’s one thing to do well in a prison atmosphere and another to show up for trial.

Keith responded, “She would not attempt to leave this jurisdiction. There’s no place for her to go.”

Miss Van Houten, a Monrovia High School homecoming princess before she joined Manson’s hippie clan, was brought here from the California Institution for Women at Frontera where she has been imprisoned since 1971. She, Manson, Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel were sentenced to death on April 19, 1971, but the sentences were commuted to life imprisonment when the death penalty was outlawed in 1972. Miss Van Houten’s conviction was reversed this year by an appeals court which said she should have been granted a mistrial after her attorney disappeared.

She was charged with only two of the seven Manson murders — the stabbing deaths of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.

During the penalty phase of her trial, Miss Van Houten, like the other two women, confessed to murder. But she refused to express remorse. “Sorry is just a five letter word,” she said then. “It can’t bring back anything.”

During her imprisonment, Miss Van Houten has written and published short stories. Keith, who has maintained a fatherly interest in his young client over the five years since her conviction, told a reporter proudly: “Leslie has grown up.”

Goertzen assigned the trial to Superior Court Judge Edward Hinz and scheduled a pretrial hearing for Jan. 20. Keith said he would move for a change of venue in the case at that time.

The Second District Court of Appeals reversed Miss Van Houten’s conviction last August, and the State Supreme court upheld that ruling this month. The appellate justices held that a mistrial should have been declared when attorney Ronald Hughes vanished toward the end of the trial. They agreed that Keith, who stepped in at the last minute, was handicapped by having seen no witnesses in the trial, thus being unable to argue their credibility to the jury.

Hughes’ body was found in a remote mountain area on the same day that death sentences were pronounced in the Manson case. He had died of natural causes — injuries suffered in a mudslide.

The four defendants in the Manson trial were not present when they were sentenced to death. As in other court sessions, they were dragged from the courtroom screaming and chanting taunts at the judge.