By E. Graydon Carter

Gentlemen's Quarterly asked him to pose doing a buck-and-wing. But it's his new megabuck-and-change contract that really has St. Louis Cardinals Shortstop Ozzie Smith, 28, kicking up his heels. Last week "the Wizard of Oz," as he is known around Busch Stadium, doubled his old salary in a pact with the 1982 World Series-winning Cards that will make him the highest-paid shortstop in major league history: a reported $1 million a year. Oz's golden-brick road will run for at least the next three seasons.

The collaborative genius of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart produced many great American plays and one theatrical masterpiece, the 1938 Pulitzer-prizewinning comedy You Can't Take It with You. Across the river from Broadway in Millburn, N.J., it has just been revived, with Jason Robards, 60, in the lead. When Kaufman's daughter Anne Kaufman, 57, and Moss Hart's widow Kitty Carlisle Hart, 65, dropped backstage, it added a familial touch to the family-oriented play that suited Robards fine. The much married reformed drinker is practicing what he performs. "You know what I did the other night?" says Robards. "I threw the football with my eight-year-old son until 9. Let me tell you, running after the football in the dark at 60 keeps you young."

Former Pittsburgh Pirate Willie Stargell, 41, last week went through the angst of being a rookie again. He had been recruited by the Eastman Philharmonia to read selected passages from the speeches of Martin Luther King to a new score written with Stargell in mind by Composer Joseph Schwantner, 39. "When you play Carnegie Hall, the knees tend to knock," said Stargell. But last week he gave a great performance in a career marked by great performances. For the old ballplayer, his debut was one from the heart. "Once, I remember we went to a drive-in movie, and the blacks had to sit in the back on benches with a little tin roof overhead in case it rained. Memories like that make you want to do something for Dr. King."

The crowds were beginning to gather at the Executive Inn Rivermont, near Owensboro, Ky. Dolly Parton, 37, had come to town. About an hour before showtime, a woman phoned Owensboro police to warn of possible danger from a man who "wants to harm her, a person who can't stand her." Parton's security consultant, Gavin DeBecker, 29, recommended that she cancel the concert and three others scheduled for last week. DeBecker believes he has a line on the man, a mental patient who has been arrested "a number of times." As for Parton, who carries a snub-nosed pistol and has in the past indicated no reluctance to use it, she holed up first in Nashville, then in Los Angeles, behind tight security.

White House offspring update: with six months remaining on his contract with the Joffrey Ballet, the President's younger son Ron Reagan, 24, announced last week that he was abandoning his career in dance. He had received some encouraging reviews, but it seemed unlikely that he would ever become a solo star. Ron said that he intended to concentrate on "other interests," which reportedly included writing. Meanwhile, Maureen Reagan, 42, has added "gameshow personality" to her resume, at $1,100 per appearance. Maureen and her husband, Dennis Revell, 29, a cable-TV consultant, taped a Tattletales last month, followed by her guest spot this week on The New $25,000 Pyramid. Finally, Reagan's younger daughter Patti Davis, 30, has struck off in new directions of her own. She has taped her first pop album in London and is already nervous about the industry and audience response. "Lots of performers' first albums aren't well received, and you never hear about it," she says, "but I won't be able to have a quiet flop."

If there were a bar in Boston called Cheers, and if it were anything like the one in NBC's new sitcom of the same name, it would be just the sort of hangout where Democratic Congressman Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill Jr., 70, might down a brew at the end of a rough day. After hearing that he thought so too, the producers invited O'Neill to tape a cameo appearance. For his TV acting debut, if one doesn't count the House's televised debates, O'Neill is hunched over the bar when George Wendt, 34 (the Speaker's favorite character in the series), plunks down beside him and heaves into a tirade on Washington. "This bozo right here next to me could probably be a better Congressman than those guys in Congress," says Wendt. Add laugh track. And so the line between show biz and politics blurs further.

Organizers of big-time events have increasingly felt it necessary to embrace something cuddly, furry or feathery as their mascot--to be licensed for everything from tote bags and T shirts to coffee mugs and lobster bibs. The Moscow Olympics had a bear, the 1984 Los Angeles Games have a bald eagle, and for the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition, the city fathers of New Orleans picked a pelican. Last week the bird showed up at a Louisiana-sponsored State Department reception, to the amusement of Secretary of State George Shultz, 62. Perhaps his department needs a mascot too. How about a giraffe (elegant, with no voice of its own), a penguin (always in formal dress) or Dr. Dolittle's Pushmi-Pullyu (for simultaneously making policy statements and taking them back)?

Tapping golf balls across a green a couple of years back, Jim Flood, 49, flipped his putter around, swung a few times and achieved pleasant results. The president and chief tinkerer of a San Diego-based golf-equipment firm retired to his shop and emerged with the Basakwerd, a putter with a head that points toward the body. It demands a square stroke of the ball that literally forces the player to use a textbook swing. Or so the theory goes. Golfers, of course, will try anything short of pool cues or ball-peen hammers to improve their putting game. Arnold Palmer, 53, gave it a swing, and at the Los Angeles Open earlier this month Johnny Miller, 35, and three other pros were all Basakwerders, at least on a few greens. Says Gene Littler, 52, who has been using the putter the longest: "It makes you laugh when you see it, but use it and you'll stop laughing." Littler has. He boasts the lowest average number of strokes per round on the pro tour for the past month.

Within the troubled mind of Sara Jane Moore, 52, there lies a dichotomy. As a radical marching to her own confused manifesto, she was sentenced to life for trying to kill President Gerald Ford in 1975. But there is also apparently Sara Jane Moore, the needlepoint-loving homebody. Securely imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Institution in Pleasanton, Calif., she seems to be the model of middle-aged matronliness. Says Moore: "I'm just a typical little old lady in her fifties." And in her jail cell.

--By E. Graydon Carter This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.