TELEVISIONHeston on a Soap Box: Charlton Heston...

TELEVISION

Heston on a Soap Box: Charlton Heston taped the first in a series of episodes of the CBS soap opera “The Bold & the Beautiful” that will plug film preservation. Heston plays himself in the story line, which begins airing Nov. 22 and will be seen in 45 countries. He approaches Susan Flannery’s character to do a fashion show on behalf of the American Film Institute, where Heston serves on the board, to spotlight the need for film preservation. “I’ve made a lot of movies that were not seen by 35 million people, and this show is seen by that many people around the world,” Heston said Thursday as filming began.

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Ahead of the Game: Getting a jump on the upcoming feature film “Geronimo: An American Legend,” TNT decided to air its own original movie “Geronimo” Dec. 5. It’s the first offering of Turner Broadcasting’s programming commitment called the Native American Initiative and will begin five days before the “Geronimo” feature film hits movie theaters. The TNT adventure epic was produced by Norman Jewison’s Yorktown Productions and features an all American Indian cast headed by Joseph Runningfox and August Schellenberg. “Geronimo” will be followed on Dec. 12 by “The Broken Chain,” the true story of the Iroquois League of Six Nations and its chain of peace. “The Cisco Kid,” which had been scheduled for premiere in December, will instead debut on the network in February.

MOVIES

Video Rewind: At director Taylor Hackford’s request, Hollywood Pictures Home Video will release “Bound by Honor,” Hackford’s East L.A. film drama, on home video Jan. 5 under its original title, “Blood In . . . Blood Out.” Because of concerns about potential violence in theaters following the Los Angeles riots, Hollywood Pictures changed “Blood In . . . Blood Out” to “Bound by Honor” and gave it a narrow release in theaters last April. The original title “speaks of the universal bonds of family, which is what this film is about,” Hackford said. The movie centers on three Chicano cousins raised as brothers, played by Benjamin Bratt, Jesse Borrego and Damian Chapa, who follow separate personal paths in law, art and prison.

STAGE

Manilow Inspires Play: The setting may be New York’s famed Copacabana in the 1940s, but it is Barry Manilow’s hit 1978 song named for the nightclub that will blossom into a full-length musical that will tour England and open June 23 in London’s West End. Sometime after that, the show will cross the Atlantic to the city that inspired it. Manilow has written 16 new songs to flesh out the story that “Copacabana” originally told. The lead role of Tony, the bartender at the center of the club where music and fashion are always the passion, will be played by Gary Wilmot, currently touring Britain in “Me and My Girl.”

ART

Fine Wine: A brilliantly colored Matisse cutout of a wine press sold for $13.75 million--the most ever paid for a work by Matisse on paper--at Sotheby’s sale of Impressionist and modern art on Wednesday. The 1951 work in splashes of orange, cerise, violet and green was sold to a Swiss bank, well above its presale estimate of $10 million. It was the first cutout on the market since 1966, and its price was close to the record for a Matisse painting, set last fall when the 1927 work “Harmony in Yellow” sold for $14.52 million.

POP/ROCK

Elton John Wins Suit: Rock star Elton John was awarded $518,700 in damages by a British high court jury over a newspaper story that falsely suggested he was on a “diet of death.” The Sunday Mirror reported that John, who conquered the eating disorder bulimia, was seen chewing shrimp and crab snacks at a Hollywood party and then spitting them out into a napkin. The newspaper apologized in March, acknowledging the story was untrue and John hadn’t been at the party. The jury said that $407,600 of the award was to punish the newspaper, which John had accused of reckless disregard for the truth and of being motivated by profit from an expected sales increase. The newspaper called the judgment “grossly excessive” and said it would appeal.

QUICK TAKES

E! Entertainment has acquired the repeat rights to David Letterman’s old NBC “Late Night” show, although no air date has been announced . . . Dick Clark, John Chancellor, Phil Donahue, Mark Goodson, Bob Newhart, Agnes Nixon and Jack Webb will be inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame on Nov. 20 . . . Chancellor, the recently retired NBC Nightly News anchor, will also serve as UCLA Extension’s “Journalist in Residence” in the winter quarter . . . Soap opera star Richard Eden has been signed to play the title role “RoboCop: The Series,” which premieres in TV syndication in March . . . Actor John de Lancie (Q on “Star Trek: The Next Generation”) will take the title role and actress Carolyn Seymour will narrate in the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s dramatized concert performances of Grieg’s “Peer Gynt” on Nov. 11-14 at the Music Center Pavilion.