Beyond the Paley

William Paley, who built CBS from a handful of radio stations and became one of the most powerful people in television, is the subject of a juicy new biography by New York journalist Sally Bedell Smith. ''I tried to get behind his camouflage,'' Smith says. Paley, now 88, did not try to stop her. In her research and interviews (more than 700 of them) she found ''very different versions of events from the way he had described them.'' For example, Paley liked to portray himself as the savior of the fledgling Columbia Broadcasting System, but Smith claims it was thriving when he bought it in 1928. And although Paley loved to take credit for I Love Lucy, Smith maintains that his version of events in the show's creation didn't ''square with the recollections of others involved.'' Simon & Schuster will publish In All His Glory in November.