And most of all, a hot item on the photography scene whose work is avidly collected by people who matter. To a video retailer, a Merry Christmas means stores full of well-heeled customers buying videocassettes. Robert Levine when not filming-is that "truck drivers will pull up and say 'Hey Mare, looking great, kid' " Moore returns the friendship. They wanted the band to nix all of that stuff and tone down the sound. Franklin now claims that his book was the inspiration for the movie "Beverly Hills Cop" and he has told The Times that he plans to sue Paramount Pictures, producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer and screenwriter Dan Petrie Jr. In the quiet way of the art form it celebrates, the 46th annual Puppeteers of America Festival dropped into town last weekend for a six-day stay at the Claremont Colleges.

But you'd better not screw up, because if you trip, you have a lot further to fall" "You get to be King Christmas" Segal joked. It stayed too nice and uncompelling for its own good, as he admitted over lunch, and was not a success, but it was an effort worth making and he has no regrets. Last year's "Amadeus" which, refueled by all those Oscars, continues to find audiences, is a token of hope even larger than itself, and so were "Gandhi" "Tess" and "Chariots of Fire" before it. But, despite their limited opportunities, Lourdes Lopez, Stephanie Saland and Florence Fitzgerald strongly anchor the ballet in its proper era and sensibility.

BITTER PILL: After a year and a half in downtown warehouse space, the San Diego Public Theatre is out. Opie Cunningham-as Eddie Murphy dubbed him-is still high on life and, despite a mustache and thinning hair, looks boyish as ever at 32. With its seaside location under construction for nearly a year now, the museum has been holding forth quite elegantly in a donated space at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. "I think one thing that's happened is that the decorators have gotten together. Under music director John Alexander, the 105-voice Pacific Chorale will offer "A Coronation Festival" Oct. "One of the reasons I want it to go to series is that they revive the '40s music-the big band music of Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Ray Noble, all the great bands" he said.

Executive Director Benjamin Hooks was out of town and unavailable for comment. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Wednesday disputed charges of a racially motivated Oscar shutout against "The Color Purple" A local chapter of the NAACP filed a letter of protest Tuesday labeling Monday night's Academy Awards a "slap in the face" and an industry "blackout" "This practice was used in the past to hinder the success of projects involving blacks" said Willis Edwards, president of the Hollywood-Beverly Hills branch of the National Assn. " 'Don't worry about describing Schrader's images' he told me It was very strong, very important advice I was so shocked, but it opened my eyes, my mind-my spirit. Despite renewed pleas from Tiffany owner Paula Holt and a petition from the cast of "Fatty" (a new play by Harry Essex scheduled to start previews at the Tiffany on Aug. In the four years since he last showed his work at Rosamund Felsen's gallery in West Hollywood, he has trained his camera on other subjects, but his interest in walls"my obsession" he calls it-hasn't faded. "It was something that may not have been reported before because the child did not understand what isn't right" Child Mgmt CoursesLearn From Within The Comfort Of Your Own Home.

Others, like the Cologne, West Germany radio network, commission new pieces. "There are about 20 of us" she said, "actors who love the theater but whose schedules often make it hard for them to do plays. They have all been gathered to appear on an exceedingly tacky variety show. It's very, very unlikely" Unlikely or not, two major unions whose performers appear in network commercials-the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Artists (AFTRA-are taking no chances.

There are congratulatory notes from the children and grandchildren on the Irvins' 50th wedding anniversary. But will she go back to the Globe? "I'd do it again in a minute" NEOFEST: It's nearly festival time in America's Finest City. SAN DIEGO — Paxton Whitehead glides like a desiccated, malevolent slug through the part of Shakespeare's vile, comic monster, "Richard III" at the Old Globe Theatre (through Sept 22. In her vulnerability and obvious intelligence, she elicits the concern of Olga (Hannah Schygulla, a professor of literature and a committed feminist who becomes determined to liberate Ruth soon after meeting her.

(a co-venture of UCLA and the Center Theatre Group) is under renovation and expects to reopen its doors in late August-just in time for "As Is? The Mark Taper production of "In the Belly of the Beast" so well received in Los Angeles and at Australia's Sydney Festival earlier this year, moves into New York's Joyce Theatre (Aug. Kay Griffel offers a tasteful but slightly matronly and bland Tatiana. Despite a tight, not to say taut, budget of $5 million, Bennett has recruited an impressive cast, led by Sheen, with whom Bennett worked first on "Insight" dramas for Father Ellwood Kieser. We'll just have to see if the labels can now cooperate in ways that they haven't been willing to do in the past". While its contributions fell off, the blues stronghold also was a force in the blues-rock uprising of the '60s, thanks to such musicians as Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield 4-Detroit, New Orleans and San Francisco. "That's the history of civilizations, the covert lusting-after-power thing.

Meanwhile, the police in Fussa, a Tokyo suburb where the beating was staged, said Wednesday that the 37-year-old mother of one of the girls involved had committed suicide by jumping in front of a train on Sept 23. "I've been amazed that whether we're in Boston or Denver or San Diego, the crowds laugh at the same jokes, and they cry in the same places" he said. Mention that John Chancellor once anchored "NBC Nightly News" or that Bryant Gumbel anchors "Today" and that's enough. It would be hard enough to say no if it was just Ronny Howard, the child actor, all grown up. 'SNOWDROP FESTIVAL' Czechoslovakia, 1983, 90 minutes 5:15 p. m. There is no face or figure to look at but a series of sheer pieces of cloth, suspended from a wooden platform and contoured to imply the female form and painted with the outlines of clothes. Tickets are available for $23 each at Ticketron outlets throughout Southern California.

The possibilities of a new lease on life for the former financial district have been talked about for years-ateliers, galleries, senior-citizen housing, theaters. The Southwest Museum will close its Arco Plaza satellite gallery in downtown Los Angeles Saturday when the exhibition of prints by Mexican artist Jose Guadalupe Posada comes to an end In a prepared statement, museum director Patrick T. Most folks just shuffle their feet nervously and walk sheepishly away. If you haven't seen all the films, see the complete Oscar ballot on Page 4 Whatever you do, DO NOT look on Page 89 for the answers That would be sneaky and illegal Across 1 Breakdancer 5 Miss Rheingold Beer of 1948. The feed is being made available by satellite to any cable system or TV station that wants it, a JPL spokesman said, but the space laboratory has not tried to monitor which of them actually plans to carry it. (She doesn't realize that she is, but she is) Similarly, it's natural that Beth's brother Mike (Will Patton) should take up his rifle and go out stalking Jake for having punched his sister into the hospital. An often very funny one-act piece about a girls' slumber party, "Water" skews to its surprising denouement.

Those issues-individual privacy, journalistic responsibility and the merging of newscasting and theater-are ongoing topics of concern. When the Music Center planned a 90th-birthday tribute to Edwin Lester, founder of the Civic Light Opera, every performing arts organization at the complex helped by providing their mailing lists gratis to solicit ticket buyers Well, almost every organization. A soft-spoken, articulate man, Hallet discussed his work and the special place dinosaurs occupy in the popular imagination during a recent interview at the museum, which is currently planning to give dinosaurs more space as part of its new expansion program. I don't think it makes these points, certainly not in the minds of the young audience it will speak to the loudest. Schickele has been writing music under his own name since long before he created, in the early 1950s, "the last but least" of the offspring of J. S. Brock promised him a part in the sequel to "Rio" playing the love interest to Anna May Wong. Beck flourished in the '70s too, gracefully shifting from hard rock to jazz fusion experiments with keyboards player Jan Hammer.

And Bob Stanford wrote: " 'Cain and Mabel' (1935, in which Clark co-starred with Marion Davies, was shot on the Warners lot, with Warners contract players, and was a Warners release although technically a Hearst-International production". "Hail to the Chief" failed to win a spot on ABC's fall TV schedule, a victim of declining ratings. But much of the characterization I'm doing now I 'osmosed' from Heinz Spoerli's choreography" With his own dramatic-dancing credentials in order-a principal in several companies including those in Basel and Cleveland and a soloist with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens-Tabor now is concentrating on bringing the other dancers up to par as thespians of a sort. The program includes the West Coast premieres of "Concerto Six Twenty-Two" set to Mozart's Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra, K. 622, and "A Brahms Symphony" set to Brahms' Third Symphony, along with the 1983 "Big Shoulders" a dance about Chicago, set to a tape of street and construction noises. Griffith, of course "for me, he invented the cinema, not the Lumiere brothers, and embraces Chaplin, Lubitsch, Walsh "at least one great film in every genre, Michael Curtiz (Garci has seen "Casablanca" 40 times full-size and now has it on VCR for instant reassurance, Frank Capra and Richard Quine (for "Strangers When We Meet, among many others. "What I told the NARAS meeting is that the industry should start thinking that they have a responsibility beyond the bottom line" And the musicians' unions? "Do they have the power" he asked in response.