TELEVISION - April 22, 1997

Renewal Notices: CBS has renewed its Monday night drama “Chicago Hope,” along with the sitcoms “The Nanny” and “Cybill” for next season. . . . ABC has renewed the hit sitcoms “The Drew Carey Show,” “Spin City” and “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch” for next season. The network’s Emmy-winning dramatic series “NYPD Blue” has been renewed for two seasons. . . . Fox has ordered an additional 13 episodes of “Pacific Palisades,” its latest prime-time drama from Aaron Spelling. The new episodes will air during the summer.

MOVIES

Angry Aussies: Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush and Nicole Kidman are among the 19 Australian actors, producers and directors who have joined forces to attack government plans to cut film funding nearly in half. The group sent a letter Friday to Australian Prime Minister John Howard saying the cuts due out in May would have a crippling effect on the country’s film industry. “Inevitably, the cuts will lead to a rapid downturn in production and consequent unemployment, shake investor confidence in Australia’s audiovisual industries and lead to a brain drain of talent to Hollywood,” the letter said.

PEOPLE WATCH

Play It Again: Woody Allen has a new gig. The Oscar-winning filmmaker, who played clarinet for years at the recently closed Michael’s Pub, has found a new venue. Allen is now performing Mondays at New York’s Carlyle Hotel (Bobby Short’s professional home) with the Eddy Davis New Orleans Jazz Band. For those who want to see the Woodman in concert, tickets are $45.

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Holy Matrimony!: Brooke Shields and Andre Agassi aren’t the only dynamic duo who got hitched this weekend. Chris O’Donnell, who plays the Caped Crusader’s cohort in the upcoming “Batman and Robin,” married Caroline Fentress Saturday at St. Patrick’s Church in Washington. The bride, daughter of sports agent Lee Fentress, is a kindergarten teacher. The two had been introduced by the bride’s brother, who attended Boston College with O’Donnell. O’Donnell also starred in “Scent of a Woman” and “Circle of Friends.”

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Love Letters: Thirteen letters “Gone With the Wind” author Margaret Mitchell wrote to Henry Love Angel, an early suitor and longtime friend, sold for $32,200 at Christie’s in New York on Monday. The letters and a signed manuscript of “Lost Laysen,” a Mitchell novella, were found three years ago at the home of Angel’s son. Angel died in 1945; Mitchell in 1949.

THE ARTS

Music Center Boost: The Music Center has received a $550,000 audience development grant from the James Irvine Foundation. The grant will fund new programs aimed at attracting Latino audiences to L.A. Opera, making Center Theatre Group more visible and accessible to younger audiences, introducing community groups to the L.A. Philharmonic and expanding L.A. Master Chorale’s High School Choir Festival.

THEATER

Parrothead: The Musical: “Margaritaville” composer Jimmy Buffett has collaborated with Herman Wouk (“The Caine Mutiny”) on a new musical based on Wouk’s novel “Don’t Stop the Carnival.” The play, which premiered Saturday at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Florida, is about a New Yorker who heads to the Caribbean to operate a club and runs into a series of troubles. One critic said Buffett’s effort was “flawed but fun.” The show has already extended by a week and the Taurus Bar, a popular watering hole next to the theater, has reportedly doubled its tequila order during the engagement.

QUICK TAKES

Six days after elective surgery to replace a faulty heart valve, Arnold Schwarzenegger was walking in a hospital room and his publicist said he would go home soon. “He’s making a very rapid recovery,” spokeswoman Catherine Olim said Monday, adding doctors “expect he will be released early this week.” . . . Oregon author Ken Kesey plans to deliver his magic bus, an icon of the 1960s psychedelic era, to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland as the centerpiece of a new exhibit. . . . Barney Martin (Jerry’s father on “Seinfeld”) and Alan Rachins (“L.A. Law”) have been cast in “Promises, Promises” (May 14-18), the first attraction of the “Reprise! Broadway’s Best in Concert” series at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse. . . . New York-based documentary filmmaker Constance Marks (“Green Chimneys”) has won the 1997 Taos Talking Picture Festival’s second annual Innovation Award, which includes in its prize five acres of land on the scenic Taos mesa. The prize aims to establish a community of gifted filmmakers in Taos.