Tracey Ullman

Calendar's choices of Taste Makers--people who move and shape our arts and entertainment in 1988--run the gamut. If the eight faces on the cover form a rather curious collection, it's because creative abilities come in many forms. As a result, our group's pursuits range from directing the distinguished PBS series "American Playhouse," to fronting the hard-living, hard-rock band Guns N' Roses.

We were 30 minutes late to talk to Tracey Ullman, who was back in England for a spell. She didn't mind the tardiness a bit. The second season of "Tracey Ullman's State of the Union" premieres on Showtime tonight. -- What's big in England now? The recession is pretty big. There's an abandoned house next door -- we were evicting squatters this morning. I live opposite a house: the Indian steel magnate [Lakshmi] Mittal.

Tracey Ullman fans will have a pleasant time with her one-hour special on Sunday at 9 p.m. on Channels 11 and 6, a compilation of what she considers her best sketches over the past year. Tracey Ullman detractors--that is, those who find themselves driven inexplicably morose in the face of excess cute--won't have much to complain about either: The show is varied, well-paced, bright and weightless enough to seem mercifully brief. Ullman is not the subtlest of performers, and there is lacquered hardness about her that thwarts her occasional attempts at pathos.

Tracey Ullman fans might find it hard to believe, but in her two-plus decades on TV, the master impersonator has rarely ventured into the world of celebrities. That changes March 30, when "Tracey Ullman's State of the Union" premieres on Showtime. On the new weekly series, the 48-year-old British-born comedian is fearless with her portrayals of the famous, moving breezily from Laurie David to David Beckham. To help perfect her Arianna Huffington impression, Ullman listens to "Left, Right & Center" on KCRW.

SHE BLEW in like a cyclone, driven by hope and hype. A noisy, electrifying, taut, frantic Cockney she was, a bundle of instincts, nerve endings, hairpin curves and surprises, a multi-minded, multistoried, multivoiced, multi-wigged, multi-faced colossus of comedy who was going to take American TV viewers on the thrilling ride of their lives. And? It's been a year since "The Tracey Ullman Show" began on Fox Broadcasting Co.

There's, like, a problem with the photographers. There's, like, too many of them. But Tracey Ullman doesn't seem to mind. She sits in her dressing room at the Plymouth Theater and smiles. Smiles for the first one. Then smiles all over again for the second one. A few shots outside? You know, first show on Broadway, get the marquee in. There's even some tourists waiting for autographs, a few frat boys from Long Island. Hey, get them in the shot.

Tracey's New Beau: Comedian Tracey Ullman and her husband, producer Allan McKeown, have a new son: John Albert Victor, who checked in Tuesday at 8 pounds and 13 ounces. Ullman's first child, Mabel, is 5 years old.

"It's Garry Shandling's Show" is hilarious. From the opening song to the final monologue, I am in stitches. He and Tracey Ullman have made me actually look forward to Sunday nights. Keep up the good work, Fox. Melissa Rose, Irvine

She Won't Have to Pay: A Los Angeles judge on Wednesday rejected 20th Century Fox's request to make Tracey Ullman pay up to $900,000 in attorneys' fees the studio spent to defend itself against the actress's lawsuit over profits from "The Simpsons," which spun off from her defunct "Tracey Ullman Show."

I'm going to miss Tracey Ullman. Her show is/was highly innovative, refreshingly intelligent and artistically significant. This enormously talented and versatile Britisher provided a real (and much-needed) touch of class to the all-too enduring cesspool of mediocrity that is (with few exceptions) American television. John Emerson, Sherman Oaks

This week at latimes.com/image: Style Scout "Artsy" doesn't even begin to describe the crowd that turned out for the grand opening party Sept. 6 at the new Maison Martin Margiela store in Beverly Hills. Revelers looked more like time travelers from an '80s Basquiat exhibition in SoHo than Beverly Hills fashonistas. There was former New York club kid James St.

Last month actress and comedian Tracey Ullman, 39, won an American Comedy Award as best TV actress for her HBO series "Tracey Takes On . . ." (Wednesdays, 10 p.m.). The British-born Ullman, Emmy'd six times, portrays a slew of characters, among them: Chic, a New York cabby; Mrs. Noh Nang Ning, a doughnut shop owner; and Trevor, gay male flight attendant. Question: What's the worst part of being in some of those costumes? Answer: I hate sticking on beards.

Where other people see burglars under the bed, Tracey Ullman sees possibilities. Take the Beverly Hills Madam's bed. Please. "I love that she kept money underneath her bed," Ullman says, licking her creative chops. "She never gets up all day. If she ever has to get out of bed, it's like, 'Dammit, I've got to get out of bed. I've got to get dressed.' "That's when something major happens that she has to get dressed.

Top Shows / Emmys "3rd Rock From the Sun": 5 "Miss Evers' Boys": 5 "NYPD Blue": 4 "ER": 3 "The X-Files": 3 "Mad About You": 3 "Tracey Takes On ...": 3 Network / Emmys NBC: 24 HBO: 19 CBS: 12 ABC: 10 PBS: 6 * These totals include Emmys awarded Sept. 7 in 52 other categories. SOUND BITES "I, on the other hand, play myself. And I guess last year you people didn't buy me as me." * "If my shrink is watching, keep 9 a.m. tomorrow open."

This distinctive 1993 film moves gracefully from knock-about high spirits to a kind of austere sublimity. The shifts in tone correspond to its portrayal of three generations of Italian-American women in New York's Little Italy following World War II. Carmela (Judith Malina) is the deeply superstitious mother of the neighborhood butcher (Vincent D'Onofrio), who wins his 17-year-old wife, Catherine (Tracey Ullman, pictured), in a pinochle game (Bravo Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. and Wednesday at 10

Tracey Takes On Protest: An Asian American advocacy group has blasted one of the characters portrayed in Tracey Ullman's new HBO series as being stereotypical and racist. The Media Action Network for Asian Americans said the Mrs. Noh Nah Ning character that Ullman plays on "Tracey Takes On . . . " is offensive because of "the yellowing of her face" and the "tired stereotype of being a wise Chinese philosopher."

Normally a series needs to have been off the air longer than a year to qualify for Retro. But this week's featured program was a classic--at least by critical standards--from almost its premiere episode. The fledgling Fox Network took a huge gamble when it gave British comedian/actress/singer Tracey Ullman her own series back in April, 1987. Enormously popular in her homeland, Ullman had very little exposure stateside.

Ullman, Freeman Star in 'Shrew': A quirky version of Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew" is scheduled to open in New York on June 22. Comedian Tracey Ullman will play Katherine, and Morgan Freeman, who was nominated for an Oscar for "Driving Miss Daisy," has been cast as Petruchio. This version of "Shrew" will be set in the Old West and will be directed by A. J. Antoon, who once set "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in Brazil.

Eight Southern California performances of "Andrew Lloyd Webber--Music of the Night" have been added at Long Beach's Terrace Theatre, May 7-12. The production will also be seen at the Music Center April 23-May 5. . . . Tracey Ullman was inked by HBO for 15 new episodes of her comedy series "Tracey Takes On. . . ," which will return to the network in early 1997, it was announced Wednesday. The show wraps up its 1996 run of 10 half-hour shows this month. . . .

The setting is a swank old Pasadena mansion, where comic Tracey Ullman has come for a news conference to promote her new half-hour, almost one-woman series on HBO, "Tracey Takes On . . . ." Sitting on an embroidered Victorian couch, a crackling fire nearby, the British-born actress swiftly transforms the ever-so-proper mood of the place into a den of hilarity. She impersonates co-star Julie Kavner trying to impersonate Ullman--a screechy babble. "Julie Kavner does a terrible [impression]. . . .