Adopting the casual-to-careless style of their mother Jacqueline Onassis, Caroline, 16, and John, 13, appeared around New York City last week looking smartly scruffy. To a preview of Mike Nichols' new movie The Day of the Dolphin (see CINEMA), Caroline wore a farouche black cloak, while John appeared in jeans and suede shoes. Two days earlier, the two Kennedys had joined numerous relations, including Senator Ted Kennedy, his wife Joan, Ethel Kennedy and Eunice Shriver, at the Rockefeller Center skating rink for the ninth annual Robert F. Kennedy party for kids from the Bedford-Stuyvesant ghetto. Ski-bum style, John and Caroline both wore turtlenecks under their shirts --checkered for him, something thinner and more revealing for her.

Looking like an oriental version of a Kewpie doll, Princess Nori, 4, the only daughter of Crown Prince Akihito, 40, and Crown Princess Miehiko, 39, participated in her first important Shinto ritual: chakko-no-gi (literally skirt wearing ceremony), which marks an imperial child's entry into his or her fifth year. Dressed in a crimson and cream traditional court robe and wearing a ha-kama (skirt), Nori bowed deeply in front of her parents, who were dressed in Western clothes, to thank them for their protection, care and affection. Then, combining royal poise with a little girl's pleasure in new clothes, she gave them a smile that lit up the palace's Sun and Moon Room, where the ceremony took place.

"Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me," sang LaVerne, Maxene and Patty as the Andrews Sisters harmonized their way to the top of the '40s charts. Then a series of sisterly spats created dissonance among the trio. By the time that the eldest, LaVerne, died at 51 in 1967, the sisters were almost completely out of show business. But then came nostalgia chic. Next month Maxene, 56, and Patty, 53, will be back in Over Here, a Broadway musical about two sisters who run a World War II uso canteen, with music composed by Richard and Robert (Mary Poppins) Sherman. There will even be a few numbers in the original three-part harmony: Maxene and Patty will be joined by a newcomer, Jane Sell, 32, who for the show's duration will be an Andrews foster sister.

Flamboyant Courtroom Tactician Melvin Belli, 66, now finds himself in the dock for misleading a judge --of books, that is. New York Times Book Review Editor John Leonard, 34, last week wrote a column charging Belli with deception. It seems that Belli asked Leonard for the reviewing assignment on The Finest Judges Money Can Buy by one Charles Ashman. Only after Belli's bland notice was published by the Times in November did Editor Leonard learn that Ashman was a convicted felon (for passing bad checks), a former director of the Belli Foundation and a Belli client. Furthermore, from an article in the Nashville Tennesseean Leonard discovered that Ashman's work turned out to bear an uncanny likeness to parts of a 1963 book on judicial malpractice: The Corrupt Judge by Joseph Borkin. Reached in Paris, Belli chose a semantic defense. "If I can't write a good review about a good friend's book, then I'm not a good lawyer. Besides, I even write glowing reviews of my own books."

"Let's just say I'm a hell of a rich man and that laws make should be watched closely," snapped Canada's Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau. He had just emerged from the House of Commons in Ottawa after suggesting some civil service guidelines to avoid conflict-of-interest problems. Multimillionaire Trudeau inherited a fortune, currently thought to be around $4 million, from his father, a Montreal lawyer who established a chain of gas stations. Under pressure from reporters, the Prime Minister somewhat testily revealed that he had sold some of his stocks after assuming his first cabinet office in 1967 and gave control of the rest of his holdings to an independent trustee. As for his own estimate of his assets, Trudeau resorted to flippancy: "I am worth $100 million or $200 million, and next year it may be $400 million."

The plot: a corporate executive loses wife, children and job because of his drinking problem. The star: Dick Van Dyke, who has established a milk-sipping, father-figure image on his own weekly CBS-TV comedy show. Van Dyke's role in The Morning After--an ABC Movie of the Week to be aired later in the season--hardly seemed like typecasting. But, said Dick, it was. He and his wife of 26 years, Margie, began hitting the bottle a decade ago. "The beginning of drinking together is wonderful," he said. "You seem to have such wonderful insights. Then we got to the point where we couldn't get the words out. I kept calling her Fred." Fifteen months ago, Dick, 48, sought professional help. Now both Van Dykes are permanently on the wagon. Explained Dick: "I came to the point where you lose control. In my opinion, thousands in this country are at that point but won't face it."

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