The tall man in the London-tailored suit and woolen muffler sipped his coffee and carefully observed the husky blond in the pea jacket. Then embattled ex-CIA Director Richard Helms threw caution to the wind. He stepped over to ask whether "I was encountering as many difficulties as he had been experiencing lately," explained Robert Bedford. The star is playing a CIA man on the run in the film adaptation of James Grady's novel Six Days of the Condor. Helms had dropped by at the suggestion of the movie's director, Sydney Pollack. Helms did not engage in shoptalk, said Redford, just chatted generally about the film. And the weather was so icy on the gusty New York City set that Redford dubbed him "the spy who came into the cold."

The neo-Balzacian novel from which John and Maureen Dean sprang is now reaching a richly ironic climax. Freed from prison after serving only four months of his one-to four-year Watergate sentence, John hurried home to Mo in Los Angeles to tot up the wages of sin. There was the $350,000 advance from Simon & Schuster for hard-cover rights to John's account of life with Nixon, and the same publisher's undisclosed advance to Mo for her version of life with John. Then there is John's lecture tour, which starts Feb. 2 at the University of Virginia. Eventually, says his agent David Obst (who also set up a $1 million take for Woodward and Bernstein), "Dean stands to make as much as Woodward and Bernstein each made from All the President's Men, which is now the hottest paperback in the country." While Nixon and others whose downfall he encompassed have not nearly such rosy prospects, Dean, 36, was looking forward to years of gilt-edged living as he and Mo jetted for a Caribbean vacation.

Lillian Gish was a 13-year-old actress working for Theatrical Producer David Belasco when she signed on as an extra at the eccentric David Lewelyn Wark Griffith's Manhattan movie studio in 1912. For the next ten years, she starred in some of Griffith's greatest films--Birth of a Nation, Way Down East, Intolerance. Griffith died a forgotten man in 1948, but Gish never stopped working to have his genius recognized. Last week, on the centenary of Griffith's birth and at Gish's urging, a 10-c- stamp with the film maker's profile was issued, and Lillian, now a buoyant 75, starred briefly at the opening of the Museum of Modern Art's Griffith festival in Manhattan. Then she headed for China on a round-the-world lecture tour. She is taking along a selection of silents, among them Griffith's The Lady and the Mouse and A Romance of Happy Valley. "Imagine," Gish said, "I had to borrow prints of those films from Russia. We don't have them. But they recognize film as powerful and important." Then she added, "Movies have to answer a great deal for what the world is today."

Max the Menace was 18 last week. And a very pretty Max is Princess Caroline of Monaco, who confessed in an interview with the New York Daily News that she had been nicknamed after the short-tempered French cartoon character by her schoolfellows at Paris' School of Political Science. Said Caroline: "I've had an occasional brief crush, but I've never been in love." She is too busy for that. Even on her birthday, which she celebrated in Paris with her parents at the family's Avenue Foch apartment, Caroline had to take a law exam and attend riding school. She barely had time to take a spin in the dark blue Fiat sportscar that was Prince Rainier's and Princess Grace's present to her, and enjoy a family lunch topped off with her favorite: Sacher torte with whipped cream.

The Mickey Mouse Club is back on the tube. Reruns of the hit kids' TV show of the '50s are being aired on stations in more than 50 cities, and one viewer who is eagerly tuning in is Annette Funicello, 32. The retired star was thrilled to see herself as an orbicular-eared Mousketeer again. "They were the most fun years of my life," sighed Annette, who is now married to Hollywood Agent Jack Gilardi, and has been pestered by her own kids about her childhood career. "They kept asking 'What's a Mousketeer?' " she said. Now Gina, 9, and Jackie, 5, know, and they envy Mom, who recalled wistfully: "It was like being in Disneyland every day."

President Idi ("Big Daddy") Amin Dado of Uganda is planning to invade Great Britain. Radio Uganda broadcast last week a message from the ex-sergeant major notifying his ex-commander, Queen Elizabeth, that uninvited, he will arrive in England next Aug. 4. Amin wants to meet not only the Asians he booted out of Uganda in 1972, but also dissident Scots, Northern Irish and Welsh who are "struggling for independence from your political and economic system." Big Daddy added that he was giving the Queen notice so she could be sure he was made comfortable. The Tower of London is just the place, think many Britons.

Cameras are usually banned from courtrooms. So the recently ended three-month trial of John Ehrlichman, H.R. Haldeman, John Mitchell, et al. for conspiracy and other crimes in the Watergate affair gave work to many artists, including Portraitist Jamie Wyeth, 28, scion of the Wyeth painting dynasty. "They all knew I was sketching them. In fact, Ehrlichman was sketching too," he says. Jamie's feelings changed as the trial progressed: "When I first came into the courtroom I thought they should all be in jail. Later it wasn't so simple. I think they paid the price." He hopes eventually to publish a book of his drawings. No word yet whether Ehrlichman plans to do the same.

The kind of schlock-rock life led by Elton John, 27, was bound to age him fast. Still, his fans may be startled to see him looking like a grizzled ancient in his forthcoming appearance on the Cher TV special. Wearing a satin-lapelled dressing gown and high-heeled clunkers, John plays a senile rock-'n'-roller incarcerated in a rest home along with an equally decayed Bette Midler and Flip Wilson. John's eyeglasses, a particular fetish, are surprisingly modest. Of his 100 pairs, he has chosen tinted aviators, rather than the giant shades even larger than himself that he once staggered onstage with, or the sporty diamante numbers with pin wheels sparkling at the corners that he liked to show off before doing a handstand on the keyboard.

"My dad can whip your dad," Buzzy Jackson, 4, the son of Atlanta's 300-lb. Mayor Maynard Jackson, 36, must have told Muhammad Ibn Ali, 2. Obviously, Muhammad said that he would have to see about that and trotted home to tell Daddy to take on city hall. Soon World Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali, 33, and the mayor were in training. "The champ may be strong, but he isn't all there/ If he thinks he can beat this dy-no-mite mayor," taunted Jackson. Riposted Ali, "He don't want to brag and he thinks he's so hip/ If he keeps talking trash, I'll pop him in the lip." Last week, the poetaster-pugilists stepped into the ring at Atlanta's Southeastern Fair Grounds to celebrate Black Atlanta Week. Just the sight of Jackson in gargantuan batik swimming trunks was too much for Ali, and when the mayor threw a near miss past the champ's jaw, Ali went down for the count. Said Ali after recovering from the wind that whistled by his mandible, "This is his city and I had to let him win so I could get out."

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