PEOPLE WATCHLucy’s Autobiography Surfaces: More than six...

PEOPLE WATCH

Lucy’s Autobiography Surfaces: More than six years after her death, Lucille Ball is about to speak out about her life. An autobiography written by the comedienne was found last year and will be auctioned to publishers this month. Maureen O’Brien of Publishers Weekly, who announced the finding Monday on the CNNfn cable channel, said editing changes in Ball’s handwriting are on every page of the typed manuscript. Ball’s daughter, Lucie Arnaz, apparently didn’t know her mother had written an autobiography before she died in 1989: “I was as shocked as everyone else--I think she just forgot about it [or] maybe she got cold feet,” Arnaz said in a statement read by O’Brien. “It has the best account of her childhood I’ve ever read anywhere.” Bids on the manuscript are expected to reach into the millions.

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‘Hero’ Duties: The Santa Barbara County Office of Emergency Services is dubbing Kevin Costner a “local hero” for grabbing a garden hose and shovel to battle a fire in a wood pile whipped up by a New Year’s Eve windstorm near his beachfront home in Carpinteria. Firefighters couldn’t immediately get to the fire because a street was blocked by downed eucalyptus trees that shroud the exclusive neighborhood 90 miles northwest of Los Angeles. So Costner and a neighbor sprang into action, keeping the fire contained until help arrived. “If he hadn’t been there, it could have gotten pretty bad,” said an Emergency Services spokesman. It took firefighters 90 minutes to put out the blaze.

TELEVISION

‘Today’ Wins Morning News Race: NBC News’ “Today” was the highest-rated morning news program for 1995, drawing an average of 4.1 million viewing homes, marking “Today’s” first calendar year ratings win since 1989. ABC News’ “Good Morning America” stayed close behind, however, garnering an average of 4 million viewing homes, according to Nielsen figures. “CBS This Morning” came in a distant third with an average of 2.4 million viewing homes.

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And in Cabledom: Nickelodeon moved up over TBS to become the most-watched basic cable network for 1995, according to Nielsen figures. But it was the USA Network that topped all basic cable networks in prime time, the sixth year the network has gained that distinction. In prime time, USA averaged 1.5 million cable homes, followed by TNT with 1.29 million, TBS with 1.28 million, ESPN with 1.09 million homes and Nickelodeon with 1.03 million homes. The 24-hour leaders were Nickelodeon with an average of 925,000 viewing homes, followed by TBS with 762,000 homes, USA with 708,000, TNT with 658,000 and the Cartoon Network with 178,000 homes. CNN, ESPN and Lifetime all had more average viewing homes than the Cartoon network, but the rankings are based on the percentage of viewing homes that had access to each station, and the Cartoon Network is available to a much lower number of cable subscribers.

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Fox Bolsters Its Political News: Former ABC and NBC network news anchor and correspondent Mike Schneider has been named as Fox News’ first national political correspondent. Schneider, who is based in New York, will cover the 1996 presidential campaign and will provide a regular feature called “Fox News: Up Close and Political.” Schneider most recently anchored the weekend edition of NBC News’ “Today” show.

MOVIES

Ehrlichman Revises ‘Nixon’ Criticism: Former Richard Nixon aide John Ehrlichman, who was first out of the gate to criticize Oliver Stone’s “Nixon” movie, now concedes that after seeing it, the film, “wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.” But he still charges that the film “seriously distorts the day-to-day workings of the Nixon White House.” After receiving advance portions of the script, Ehrlichman had called the film “made-up stuff and . . . very cruel” during a late-November appearance on “The Late Late Show With Tom Snyder.” In the Jan. 8 edition of Newsweek, the convicted Watergate conspirator writes that, “As an explanation of Richard Nixon, the movie flunks,” and he faults Stone for suggesting that “nothing ever happened around Nixon except dark conspiracy and heavy drinking.”

QUICK TAKES

Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni has delayed his return to the stage because of kidney problems. The 72-year-old actor was expected to star in the Milan opening of “Le Ultime Lune (The Last Moons),” a one-act drama about a father-son relationship, on Monday. The theater said Tuesday the opening was postponed to Jan. 23. . . . ABC newsman David Brinkley is recovering from removal of a benign growth on his lung during surgery in Washington last week. Sources indicate he’ll return to “This Week With David Brinkley” in a couple of weeks. Sam Donaldson subbed for him on Sunday’s broadcast. . . . An L.A. judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit brought by actors George Wendt and John Ratzenberger, who claimed robots placed at about a dozen “Cheers” airport bars resembled their TV characters, Norm and Cliff. U.S. District Judge Manuel Real concluded that the animatronic figures--named Bob and Hank--looked nothing like the actors who played television’s most famous drinking buddies. The case had originally been thrown out of federal court, but an appeals panel reinstated it.