By Sara Medina

More precious than precocious at age seven, the little charmer is already a veteran of several commercials and films (Altered States), and this summer she is a star of the new smash movie E.T. But for Actress Drew Barrymore this line of work is a bloodline. So it was easy helping the U.S. Postal Service last week to introduce a commemorative stamp of her grandfather John Barrymore (1882-1942), great-aunt Ethel (1879-1959) and great-uncle Lionel (1878-1954). Even competing with the Great Profile, the left side Granddad preferred to have depicted, Drew effortlessly upstaged, or rather understaged, her famous forebears. The daughter of Writer and Actor John Drew Barrymore, 50, Drew has also already learned how to get more lines: she talked with E.T. Director Steven Spielberg, who let her make up her own background dialogue.

As for Spielberg, 34, he too was dealing with--and for--legends last week. Making a long-distance telephone bid of $60,500 to an auction at Sotheby's in New York City, Spielberg acquired that most famous of cinematic props, the symbolic sled Rosebud from Orson Welles' masterpiece, Citizen Kane. It was the highest amount of money ever paid for a piece of movie memorabilia, but Spielberg was unfazed. "It would have been an insult," he said, "if it had gone for only $20,000"--the expected price tag. "Rosebud," promises the hot hit-making director, "will go over my typewriter to remind me that quality in movies comes first."

When one is accused of homosexual practices by a belligerent member of the opposite sex, one's spouse is likely to consider those fighting words. And Nancy Kissinger, 48, did. Last winter when she was accompanying her husband to Boston, where he was to undergo heart-bypass surgery, a pro-nuclear energy activist named Ellen Kaplan accosted the couple at Newark International Airport, baiting Henry Kissinger with the question, "Do you sleep with young boys at the Carlyle Hotel?" Quick as a flash, Nancy grabbed Kaplan's neck and said, "Do you want to get slugged?" Though unharmed, Kaplan pressed assault charges. Last week Newark Municipal Court Judge Julio Fuentes pronounced Nancy's reaction "spontaneous" and "somewhat human," then found her innocent. "Justice has been done," said Kissinger after the verdict. And his honor fairly defended.

"I know you, I know you," says the clownish John Styx, greeting an arrival at the gates of hell in Jacques Offenbach's comic opera Orpheus in the Underworld. "You do look familiar," replies the rubbery-faced Miss Public Opinion. He should; Styx is being played by Sid Caesar, 59, and Opinion by Imogene Coca, 73, stars from 1950 to 1954 of Your Show of Shows, a TV comedy classic. This week, in a rare appearance together, they will be reprising many of their best bits with some singing and much mugging in four performances of Orpheus at the Opera Company of Boston. The idea was cooked up by Director Sarah Caldwell, 58, who joined her featured players for a bit of balloonfoolery during rehearsals. Though opera was regularly and hilariously parodied by Caesar and Coca, both profess to find the real thing "kind of scary," in Caesar's words. But not serious. "Wagner is serious. This is not serious."

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