Unauthorized Biography

It would take a hard-hearted person indeed not to feel some sympathy for the Reagans today as they confront the equivalent of a supermarket tabloid scandal carried to the 20th power.Reagan has issued a more or less all-points denial of what is contained in the sensational "unauthorized biography" of Nancy Reagan by the indefatigable celebrity giant-killer Kitty Kelley. The problem is that a fair amount of what Kelley reports is now a matter of public record, and it is not a flattering picture of the couple who purported to be the standard-bearer of "traditional family values" in America.

Fox's made-for-TV version of Roseanne's life is just like the supermarket tabloid stories about her: too much. Who wants to know this much -- about her or anyone else?First, take the last four big tabloid headlines about her -- her claim that she was molested by her father, the spousal abuse with which she charges ex-husband Tom Arnold, her stay at a mental institution when she was a teen-ager, and, having a child out of wedlock. Then write five flimsy scenes around each, and you've pretty much got "Roseanne: An Unauthorized Biography," which will air at 9 tonight on WBFF (Channel 45)

Wal-Mart, far and away the best performing retailer in the nation by all standards, will likely reach annual sales of $96 billion by the year 2000.Without a doubt Sam Walton has one of the most outstanding performance records of any leader. And all of this grew from Walton's first store, a Ben Franklin, which ended 1945 with sales of $80,000.Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Vance Trimble, in his unauthorized biography "Sam Walton," records the major reasons for Walton's success:* Sincere customer appreciation.

Of all the fictions perpetrated in American politics, perhap one of the most absurd is that first ladies have no power. They might occasionally weigh in on personnel issues, the nation is assured, but they would never meddle in policy.But a new book, "Nancy Reagan, the Unauthorized Biography," by Kitty Kelley, could forever shatter that myth and add allegations of scandalous sexual behavior to the folklore of the Reagan era.Beyond the adoring gaze, Ms. Kelley asserts, Nancy Reagan, or "Mrs.

THE ENTERTAINMENT sensation of the moment is Garrison Keillor's decision to move his American Radio Company broadcast from New York City to a new home, possibly in New England.Politicos, impresarios and newspaper columnists have been been begging Keillor to set up the mikes in their hometowns. I would like to add my voice to the swelling chorus.Garrison, please move to Burlington or Bennington, Vt., Hartford or any of the innumerable burgs trying to catch your batwing-browed eye. But don't come to Boston.

It used to be that writing an unauthorized biography was fairl easy work, requiring little more than a box of press clippings and access to a few ex-toadies eager to dish the dirt on their former employer. Just add hype and stir: instant bio.Today's scandal-mongers need something more, though. They need an angle -- something juicy enough to get mentioned by the gossip columnists, and nasty enough to titillate even the most jaded fan.Finding that angle can be a real challenge when the subject of your sleaze-ography is someone as notorious as Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger.

IN 1976 I WROTE a book that began, "What happened during several hours on Chappaquiddick Island tells us something about what kind of person Ted Kennedy is . . . but what has happened in thousands of hours on the Senate floor and in committee hearings tells us more, I believe." Here is a reproduction from that book's index:Central Intelligence Agency, 194, 200.Chappaquiddick, Mass., 65, 66, 110, 119-20, 193, 199, 200, 210,243, 244,245, 246, 256, 262, 277.Charlestown Navy Yard, 257.Chavez, Cesar, 97, 98, 281.As you can see, even a book that was centrally concerned with such mundane stuff as the "Senate Administrative Practice and Procedure Subcommittee" (27 index entries)

The networks are trying almost anything tonight to get you to tune in. CBS has a bionic reunion telemovie, ABC has a double dose of Abandandos, and Fox has a faux Madonna.* "Wings" (8-8:30 p.m., Channel 2) -- Robert Culp guest-stars as a former astronaut being considered as a spokesman for the airline -- until his cockpit behavior is revealed to include some startlingly unprofessional stunts. Not stunts of aerial derring-do, but of juvenile derring-don'ts, such as giving your co-pilot a "wet willie."

AT B. DALTON in The Gallery, the book stands in the window, featuring a certain slender woman in red."There's the book! Fifteen percent off!" chortles a businessman to his friends, and they all swing into the store for a closer look.A high school girl drifts in with her friend, points at the book and says, "Did you hear the writer interviewed a thousand people for the book?"Two women, each immersed in a copy of the book, jump apart with guilty laughter when asked what they are doing.Yes, "Nancy Reagan, The Unauthorized Biography," has Baltimore enthralled.

Eva Moves the Furniture, by Margot Livesey. Henry Holt and Co. 232 pages. $23. Girls who lose their mothers at an early age do not have easy childhoods. Eva McEwan, the narrator of Eva Moves the Furniture, Margot Livesey's uncanny, affecting new novel, must cope with circumstances that are especially difficult. Just hours after her birth in Troon, Scotland, in 1920, Eva's mother dies from influenza, leaving her father and his unmarried sister, Lily, too grief-stricken to welcome the child.