Wally Cox

When writer-director Garry Marshall was serving as an Army private in South Korea in the late 1950s, fellow soldier Gordon Belson would tell him, "You've got to meet my brother; he's a funny guy." Marshall finally met Jerry Belson in 1962, teaming up with him a year later to become what many peers consider to be the preeminent television comedy-writing team of the 1960s and early '70s.

When people realized I worked with Jim Murray, the first thing they asked was, "Can he still see?" "Read his columns," I answered. "You tell me if he can still see." I have covered events with Murray, who was driven to the stadium, pored over a computer with his Coke-bottle glasses, then was driven home. I would pick up the paper the next day and realize, he saw more of that game than I ever would. In a sports world that takes itself so seriously, he saw humor. In victory, he saw humility.

With the release today of 1944's "Lifeboat" (Fox, $20), all of Alfred Hitchcock's Hollywood films are now out on DVD. Starring Broadway superstar Tallulah Bankhead, heartthrob du jour John Hodiak, Walter Slezak, William Bendix, Hume Cronyn, Henry Hull and famed African American actor Canada Lee, "Lifeboat" is sort of a claustrophobic "Grand Hotel" set on the high seas.

It's been several years since Peter Marshall parlayed silly questions and almost unending chitchat with the likes of Paul Lynde, Rose Marie and Wally Cox into prime-time prominence on the original "Hollywood Squares." For more than 15 years, the popular game show occupied almost the same niche of celebrity now reserved for "Wheel of Fortune," that syndicated half-hour of innocuous gab and wordplay that commands an unparalleled spot in the nightly ratings.

Kai Takarabe came to the United States from Japan in 1961 to be a student. He stayed and became a U.S. citizen so he could be a teacher. Takarabe, however, has never been confined to a classroom. For almost 30 years, he has played, coached and taught the game of rugby in Southern California. Takarabe, 49, is the founder and director of the Pasadena-based Crown City Rugby Club, one of four clubs based in the San Gabriel Valley.

TV or not TV . . . REAL LIFE: Top-ranked CBS has quietly developed a programming backbone separate from such entertainment hits as "Murphy Brown." The network now has five one-hour news and reality series that provide it with enough strength to be a ratings winner or potent contender on four nights of the week. Along with "60 Minutes" on Sunday, there is "Rescue 911" on Tuesday, "48 Hours" on Wednesday and "Top Cops" and "Street Stories" on Thursday. All are doing well.

The San Diego Padres have been the coldest team in all of professional baseball during the last month, so having America's hottest TV star sing the national anthem before a home game Wednesday night seemed a natural act of desperation. Baseball, after all, is the most superstitious of all sports; before you strangle a cat, rub a penny or order your players not to wash their underwear until the slump ends, why not bring on Roseanne Barr?

Series B of the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival, at Cal State Northridge, betrays a tendency to cram too much into each play--perhaps because four plays have to be pigeonhold into one evening. Three plays suffer from this compression. But the fourth--Murray Mednick's "Shatter 'n Wade"--survives fairly well, perhaps because one of Mednick's points is to illustrate the current onslaught of half-baked information and cockamamie theories. The evening begins with Roxanne Rogers' "Book of Numbers."

The world's great works of dramatic literature ask more questions than they answer. They fire our collective imagination with tantalizing ambiguities, not pat declarations or easy thesis points. That said, here's a certainty: Hedda Gabler needed to get out more. All that stifling late 19th century Norwegian air, those joyless chats with her husband's doting aunt--someone wanna open a window, please? Someone has.

A hotel in the San Fernando Valley is an unlikely place for anything funny to happen unless you are amused by an Iowa chicken salesman trying to sound Hollywood-cool in a Sherman Oaks bar. Safe sex and unsafe buses are on everyone's mind these days from Chatsworth to Arleta, and neither subject offers much to smile about. Then why, I hear you ask, is Budd Friedman happy? I'll tell you why. Budd Friedman is happy because he is doing for humor what Colonel Sanders did for fried chicken.