KENNEDY HONOREES CHOSEN

WASHINGTON —  Comedian Bob Hope, dancer/choreographer Merce Cunningham, actress Irene Dunne, singer Beverly Sills and the team of lyricist/playwright Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe were named Monday as the winners of the 1985 Kennedy Center Honors.

The honorees will receive their awards here Dec. 7 and then will be saluted the following night at a White House reception, a gala performance at the Kennedy Center and a dinner dance. The gala will be taped for a two-hour CBS television special.

The winners were selected by the Kennedy Center board of trustees, which has given its lifetime cultural achievement awards annually since 1978.

Hope, born 82 years ago in Eltham, England, was selected for his achievements in vaudeville, radio broadcasts, 54 films and comedy television specials. His career took off in 1939 when he appeared in “Road to Singapore,” the first of seven famous “Road to” films he made with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour.

Hope has played golf with Presidents, toured the world’s fighting spots with his USO show and received five special Academy Awards.

“I just think it’s nice to get this one. This is a goody,” Hope told The Times Monday. “It’s just one of those honors that stand out.”

Cunningham, 66, has been considered a liberating force in the field of modern dance. His unconventional ideas about chance procedures, simultaneity and spacing have been expressed in about 100 works for his own dance company. A native of Centralia, Wash., Cunningham studied theater in Seattle and later became a major dancer in the Martha Graham Dance Company, which he eventually left to strike out on his own.

Dunne, an 84-year-old native of Louisville, Ky., is best remembered for her performances in “Cimarron,” “Theodora,” “The Awful Truth,” “Love Affair” and “I Remember Mama,” all of which brought her Academy Award nominations. It was the role of Magnolia in the first road company production of “Show Boat” that was instrumental in winning her a contract with RKO Studios.

Sills, the youngest recipient at age 56, attained international fame in the 1960s as a leading soprano with the New York City Opera. Before retiring from the stage to become artistic director of that company, she had sung leading roles, mostly in the high bel-canto repertory, at virtually every major opera house in the world.

Lerner and Loewe teamed on such works as “My Fair Lady,” “Camelot,” “Gigi” and “Paint Your Wagon.” Their association on Broadway began in 1943 with “What’s Up?” Their first Broadway success came four years later with “Brigadoon.” Their last collaboration was a stage version of “Gigi” in 1973.