Glynis Johns

Glynis Johns is used to being treated like a star. Granted, she's had a very long and very accomplished career to back that up. At 12 she was a leading ballerina; at 19 she was playing Peter Pan in London. Now, at 67, she has returned to one of her favorite--and most popular--vehicles, Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's "A Little Night Music," which opens Thursday at the Doolittle Theatre.

Glynis Johns is used to being treated like a star. Granted, she's had a very long and very accomplished career to back that up. At 12 she was a leading ballerina; at 19 she was playing Peter Pan in London. Now, at 67, she has returned to one of her favorite--and most popular--vehicles, Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's "A Little Night Music," which opens Thursday at the Doolittle Theatre.

A Little More Music: Tony Award-winner Glynis Johns will play the role of Madam Armfeldt in Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music" opening April 18 at the Doolittle Theatre. "Night Music" is a show Johns knows well. She won her Tony Award for best actress in a musical playing Desiree Armfeldt, Madam Armfeldt's daughter, in the original 1973 production. Lois Nettleton was signed last week to play Desiree.

Geoffrey Barr, 70, personal manager who guided the careers of actress Jean Simmons and others, often urging them to try television. While in the Army during World War II, Barr earned the Distinguished Service Cross, Purple Heart and Bronze Star. After graduating from Northwestern University in speech and drama, Barr headed for Broadway, where he began his career as an actor in "Darkness at Noon." Later he worked as assistant to Broadway producer Cheryl Crawford.

The Hollywood Roosevelt is a great under-utilized party space, commodious enough to hold several hundred people. It's nice to see somebody getting some use out of it. The scene was Thursday night in Hollywood, at the premiere of "A Little Night Music," the latest production of the Ahmanson at the Doolittle Theatre. After the premiere, several hundred guests drove up Hollywood Boulevard to the hotel for a late supper party.

If you want to prepare yourself for Stephen Sondheim's musical "A Little Night Music" now at the Doolittle Theatre, skip the stilted movie version and go directly to the lyrical film that inspired it, Ingmar Bergman's "Smiles of a Summer Night." "A Little Night Music," the 1978 film based on the Sondheim Broadway musical (124 minutes, Image Entertainment CLV extended play laser disc) boasted a nice pedigree, but fell far short of its promise.

"The Court Jester" (1956), one of the late Danny Kaye's finest films, screens Friday at 6:30 p.m. in the County Museum of Art's Bing Theater as part of the ongoing salute to Paramount. Written, produced and directed by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank--and featuring words and music by Sylvia Fine and Sammy Cahn--"The Court Jester" is a fast and witty spoof of swashbucklers.

The new "ABC Kids Movie Matinee" earns points for not being yet another "action" (a euphemism for "violent") children's show, but the first offering in this series of original feature-length movies for children--an animated, musical version of Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic novel "The Secret Garden"--loses points for turning out to be just another Saturday morning cartoon.

Movies *** "The 49th Parallel." VidAmerica. $39.98. An all-star British flag waver film for the 1941 war effort, with a glittering roster: director Michael Powell, co-scripter Emeric Pressburger, composer Ralph Vaughan Williams--and editor David Lean on an early assignment with cinematographer Freddie Young. The plot is an exact reversal of the next Powell-Pressburger movie, "One of Our Aircraft Is Missing." There, crash-landed RAF pilots try to flee through the Netherlands.

Rex Harrison's return to Broadway in a revival of W. Somerset Maugham's "The Circle" on Monday night was met today with considerable critical praise. But, for the most part, said the New York critics, it was a case of Harrison and the other actors improving on a tired, dated play. "Star performances can enliven the creakiest of drawing room comedies, making the artificial and old-fashioned seem charming, funny and even poignant," said the Associated Press' Michael Kuchwara.

The funniest moment on the recent "Saturday Night Live" anniversary show belonged to comedian Chris Rock. Wow, he said, 25 years. Four of 'em funny. He then made the nervy if not particularly novel observation that "SNL" alumni had been responsible for some of the worst movies ever made. Chalk up another.