He was perhaps the first cowboy with discriminating tastes--Keats' poetry, Chateau Haut-Brion and Ming porcelain competing with his gun for his affections. He was called Paladin, and between 1957 and 1964 Actor Richard Boone made him one of television's most popular heroes, bringing home to CBS a tidy profit of $14 million plus millions more for his patented outfit: black hat, black pants, black shirt and a calling card that read "Have Gun, Will Travel. Wire Paladin, San Francisco." One viewer, however, thought he must be seeing his double. Rhode Island Cowboy Victor DaCosta, who had been making a hit since 1946 at New England fairs (his cards read: "Have Gun, Will Travel. Wire Paladin, Oaklawn, R.I.") found Boone to be his dead ringer, right down to the black outfit and the derringer tucked up the sleeve. Last week, after 17 years' litigation, DaCosta, now 65 and a mechanic, won his suit charging that the series had been copied from his act. A Providence court ordered CBS to pay him "the proceeds of their wrong." Yet to be determined, the sum should be enough to allow DaCosta to copy Boone/Paladin's tall-in-the-saddle style of life. . Theatrical dynasties are common enough in England, but the Redgrave clan is unique. All five members are currently in action round the world. In London, Vanessa Redgrave, 37, is starring in Noel Coward's Design for Living.

Mother Rachel Kempson, 63, is appearing in a Thames Television series on Winston Churchill, playing his grandmother, the dowager Duchess of Maryborough. Brother Corin Redgrave, 34, is finishing a film in Australia, and Father Sir Michael Redgrave, 68, opened last week in The Hollow Crown at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Arriving in New York City, he hastened to congratulate youngest daughter Lynn Redgrave, 30, for scoring her second success on Broadway, as the demon slimmer of My Fat Friend. Said Lynn ebulliently: "It's nice to know we're all working and can finally pay the rent." . Dinner with the boss is the kind of awkward evening that wives have to learn to cope with. But Nancy Maginnes Kissinger, 39, seemed to take it in stride when she appeared at her first official White House dinner (in honor of the Latin American foreign ministers), even when the boss singled her out. Said President Nixon: "We welcome Mrs. Nancy Kissinger on her first visit as the wife of the Secretary of State." Perhaps feeling that he had overdone it, he added a rider: "She's a little liberal, but otherwise she is all right." Then he underlined his doubts: "Don't interpret the word liberal too literally either."

"He who underestimates the American public will never go broke!" cried "Professor" Irwin Corey, paraphrasing H.L. Mencken to a dazed National Book Awards' audience in Manhattan. Standing in for Thomas Pynchon, whose Gravity's Rainbow shared the 1973 fiction prize with Isaac Bashevis Singer's A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories, Comedian Corey confused the assembled authors, critics and publishers with a frenetic routine, prompting some to think that he was really the reclusive Pynchon himself. Others believed that his performance was a clever parody of Pynchon's tortuous style. The ceremonies were not all fun and games. Poetry co-winners were Allen Ginsberg and Adrienne Rich. Ginsberg's standin, Poet Peter Orlovsky, clad in a T shirt covered with grim statistics from the Viet Nam War, quoted Ginsberg: "There is no longer any hope for the salvation of America." Rich somberly accepted her award on behalf of "all the women whose voices have gone and still go unheard in a patriarchal world." Obviously eager to put the proceedings into proper perspective, a salesman for the University of California Press streaked in front of the stage, shouting, "Read books, read books!" . The Watergate sleuths of the Washington Post, Carl Bernstein, 30, and Bob Woodward, 30, received a $55,000 advance from Simon & Schuster in early 1973 for their account of the scandal. After the sale of movie rights to Robert Redford for $450,000 and Playboy's $25,000 check for two excerpts, the pair expected to gross around $500,000 each from the finished book, All the President's Men, to be published this June. Then came a pleasant surprise: Warner Paperback library offered $1 million for the paperback rights--a record for a book yet to be published in hardcover. As for the sleuths' boss, Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee, he had a wry proposal for how to use their new wealth. "If you two have any decency at all," he said, "you'll help Nixon out with his taxes."

On the eve of the 150th anniversary of the death of Lord Byron, Actor Anthony Quinn, 58, announced that he too was going to Greece. He will make three movies funded in part by the Greek junta (see THE WORLD) in an effort to bolster the national movie industry that has sagged since the right-wing colonels' coup in 1967. In Athens to confirm the deal, Quinn enjoyed an afternoon in a taverna, then got off to a challenging start by saying he wanted as his co-star Actress Irene Poppas, an opponent of the regime. Quinn said that he had been guaranteed "carte blanche" in his artistic efforts. That was immediately challenged by Greek Emigre Melina Mercouri, now working in Manhattan on a documentary about repression in Greece. "If Quinn can make movies in Greece without censorship, he would then be unique in the world," she said. . It was not exactly an emotional family reunion. "I called my grandfather after I was released [by the kidnapers]," explained E. Paul Getty II. "But he didn't come to the phone. He was afraid something was going to pop out and hurt him." The 17-year-old grandson of one of the world's richest men was describing his efforts to thank Grandpa for finally coughing up the $2.9 million that won his release from the Italian bandits who held him captive for five months. In the current Rolling Stone, Paul's account of his ordeal is capped by his failure to get through to Grandfather J. Paul Getty, 81. Instead, he had to make do with an aide. "I told the aide I wanted to thank him for paying the money. The aide said my grandfather said I was welcome. I told the aide thanks again. Then I told the aide goodbye. The aide told me Grandfather said good luck."

"Yes, I am working on a new film called The Freak," said Charlie Chaplin, renouncing the idea of retirement even on his 85th birthday. Well bundled up against the cold in a fur-collared coat, the lord of Manoir le Ban in Vevey, Switzerland, greeted well-wishers with the observation that modern movies are "generally better than in the old days." Chaplin refused to elaborate on his own new movie and acknowledged a little sadly that "the older you get, the more you think of the past, the more you think of death." But his eyes twinkled again when a troop of local schoolchildren arrived to wish him "Bon anniversaire," and as he went indoors to join a family party given by his wife, Oona O'Neill Chaplin, 49, and attended by six of his eight children, his infirm step seemed to have a vestigial jauntiness.

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