MOVIESAnother Honor: The red-hot writing team of...

MOVIES

Another Honor: The red-hot writing team of Emma Thompson and Jane Austen are in for another honor. USC’s Scripter Award Selection Committee announced Monday that its annual award for best realization of a book as a film will go to Thompson for her adaptation of Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility,” the same work that won Thompson the Golden Globe for screenwriting Sunday. The Scripter Award program, which benefits the libraries of USC, will be presented March 9 in the Doheny Library of USC. Other nominees for the award were “Apollo 13,” “Carrington,” “Devil in a Blue Dress” and “Get Shorty.”

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Houston Signs With Disney: Singer-actress Whitney Houston and her production company, Houston Productions, inked a two-year nonexclusive, first-look development and production agreement with Disney’s Touchstone Pictures, it was announced Monday by Joe Roth, chairman of the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, and Donald De Line, president of Touchtone. Among the projects planned by Houston Productions is a film based on the life of legendary singer and actress Dorothy Dandridge. Said Houston: “I not only want to produce movies for myself but I want to develop and produce material for both motion pictures and television that I like and believe in.” She credited Roth with being the first executive to encourage her to pursue an acting career.

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Not Acting: Actress Claudia Cardinale and her husband, movie director and right-wing senator Pasquale Squitieri, were stopped at a red light in Naples Friday night when a youth ripped a Rolex watch off Squitieri’s wrist while another opened the passenger door and stole Cardinale’s purse. The thieves vanished into the streets in a scenario familiar to many tourists and Neapolitans victimized by the scippatori, as the young thieves are called. The 56-year-old actress, known for her roles in Fellini’s “8 1/2” and “The Leopard,” lost $425 worth of lire and French francs, her identification, a credit card and a plane ticket to Paris, Corriere Della Sera of Milan said.

STAGE

Redgrave, Goulet to Team Up: Lynn Redgrave and Robert Goulet will step into the Broadway farce “Moon Over Buffalo,” replacing headliners Carol Burnett and Philip Bosco. Redgrave and Goulet, who have not previously worked together, pair up in March for seven weeks, said Ken Ludwig, who wrote “Moon” in his Washington basement. He recruited Goulet himself at the Broadway opening of “Victor/Victoria.” A former Washington lawyer, Ludwig also wrote “Crazy for You” and “Lend Me a Tenor” and is at work on a country musical about Tom Sawyer.

ART

A Day in the Office: White House aide John Ehrlichman had a habit of sketching on official stationery during meetings, turning out what his boss, President Richard Nixon, called “little pictures.” On Friday, the “little pictures” joined the ranks of art when about 10 sketches were sold in an Atlanta gallery where about 500 people crowded in to see several dozen on display. The artworks--which sold for about $2,500 apiece--were done strictly as a diversion, Ehrlichman said.

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An Afternoon in the Gallery: Meanwhile, art was not being ignored by the other political party either. President Clinton, wife Hillary Rodham Clinton, their daughter, Chelsea, and some friends spent more than an hour Sunday touring the Vermeer exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington before it opened to the public. And they didn’t have to use headphones. Instead, museum director Earl A. “Rusty” Powell III, who used to run L.A. County’s Museum of Art, gave them a guided tour.

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Early Snapshot: As a homework assignment in 1750, 18-year-old Hannah Otis sewed stitches of fine silk and metallic threads into a snapshot view of Boston. Saturday, her descendants sold the needlework for nearly $1.2 million, the most paid for any needlework ever auctioned. The large embroidery, designed to hang over a fireplace mantle, was bought by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts at Sotheby’s in New York. It had been on loan to the museum since 1954.

QUICK TAKES

Country singer Wynonna Judd and yacht salesman Arch Kelley III tied the knot Sunday in Nashville at a private wedding--if you don’t count the photographers outside and in a helicopter above. The bride, who is expecting the couple’s second child, departed with her groom in a vintage black Cadillac after the ceremony in Christ Church. . . . Jerry Lewis, suffering from voice strain, skipped the last San Antonio performance of the touring musical “Damn Yankees” Sunday. Lewis began losing his voice at the Sunday matinee, the Majestic Theater said. About 200 theatergoers from an audience of about 2,000 opted for refunds rather than see understudy Jamie Ross step into Lewis’ role Sunday night. . . . Former “Tonight Show,” host Johnny Carson gave $1 million last week to help build a learning center serving the Nebraska region where he grew up. The $2.5-million Lifelong Learning Center in Norfolk will use satellite technology and other technical developments to offer college degrees and job training.