By E. Graydon Carter

He took 27 bullet wounds during the first 24 years of his life, battling such miserable miscreants as Flattop, the Mole, Pruneface, Mumbles, the Brow, B-B Eyes and 88 Keyes (the larcenous pianist). But the villains never got the best of Dick Tracy, the hatchet-jawed, hawk-nosed dean of comic-strip detectives. Last week, Tracy, his snap-brim hat and two-way radio intact, celebrated his 50th year as a cartoon hawkshaw. So did his creator, Chester Gould, 80. Gould, now in affluent retirement in Woodstock, Ill., first dubbed his hero "Plainclothes Tracy," The moniker soon changed and later, so did Tracy. After an 18-year courtship, he finally wed his blond sweetie Tess Trueheart, and, says Gould: "I left Tracy a little more handsome than he was in 1931." In 1977 Chester passed on his pen to two young successors, Rick Fletcher, and Allan Collins, after "46 years, two months and 21 days on the job." But he is grumpy about the current strip. Says Gould: "I drew it as a law-and-order exercise from the start. But today Tracy has become part of a soap opera, and I don't care for it very much."

What do you get when you team up Gene Wilder, 43, (Silver Streak, Stir Crazy) with Gilda Radner, 35, (Saturday Night Live) in a murder-mystery romance? Hanky Panky, that's what. In the film, due out next summer, Wilder witnesses a murder. He and Radner then hit the road for clues to the crime, with Freelance Villain Richard Widmark, 66, in hot pursuit. Along for the chase are the police, who--you guessed it--think Wilder is the murderer. Love blossoms between the two co-stars during the film, but not, it seems, during a ride aboard a horse-drawn victoria in New York's Central Park. Says Wilder: "If you think that's a warm, romantic scene, you're wrong. It's just two people huddling together on a cold autumn day trying to keep from freezing."

"I did it myyyyyyyyyyy waaaaaaaaaayyyy." And so he did, back in the days when he acted as Jimmy Carter's wisecracking, shoot-from-the-lip chief inflation fighter. Back midst the ivied halls of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., where he was once dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and is now a professor of economics, Alfred Kahn, 63, has polished up his act. A robust bass, he regularly turns up in local Gilbert and Sullivan productions, playing the modern Major General in Pirates of Penzance, Ko-ko in The Mikado and Jack Point in Yeoman of the Guards. Asked to aid a local fund raiser, Kahn happily swapped his tweedy academic threads for the lounge-lizard's black tie. "It was more a benefit for me," says he. "I'd give up my career to sing the role of Fredrik Egerman in A Little Night Music." So, decked out in a tux that probably cost less than one of Wayne Newton's cuff links, Kahn valiantly warbled eleven tunes, mostly Gershwin and Cole Porter. Just to prove that he hasn't abandoned politics, the songster topped his 40-minute performance with a Night Music number that he said he wanted to dedicate to the Reagan Administration: Send in the Clowns. --By E. Graydon Carter

On the Record

Frank Sinatra, 65, on a benefit for the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center that he will perform with Luciano Pavarotti: "All we have to do is forget ticket sales, match Luciano's weight in diamonds, and we're home free with an unbeatable figure. Fortunately, the figure is Luciano's."

Potter Stewart, retired Supreme Court Justice, on increasing the court's membership to lighten the work load: "I don't think that would solve the problem. Life on the court would have been a lot simpler for me if I had no colleagues at all."

Susan Ford, recalling the time her father Jerry Ford had mistakenly dispatched one of her report cards to his library at the University of Michigan: "Anything my dad finds, he has it notarized and sends it--things I'd rather forget."

Harry Reasoner, 60 Minutes correspondent, on covering the White House: "What it is, really, is the world's most important police beat."

--By E. Graydon Carter

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