TELEVISION - March 8, 1994

Marvel-ous: Marvel Entertainment Group’s super-heroes are getting around these days. The “Marvel Action Hour,” a new one-hour syndicated series scheduled to launch in September, will star the Fantastic Four and Iron Man. Both were created by legendary Marvel artist Stan Lee in the 1960s. Lee will serve as the program’s co-executive producer and host, offering live-action behind-the-scenes glances at the Marvel Universe. Meanwhile, Spider-Man is the subject of a major feature film and a new network series, and the X-Men will premiere their third consecutive season on Fox this fall.

* It’s a Midnight Thing: “The Arsenio Hall Show” is being bumped by KCOP-TV Channel 13 from its 11:30 p.m. slot to midnight starting next month, officials said. The move apparently was made because of declining ratings for the show, which was criticized recently for playing host to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. KCOP’s 11:30 slot will feature reruns of “Night Court” starting April 4.

* Shirley Temple Goes Video: If you want to get an idea of how red Shirley Temple’s hair really was, FoxVideo will release a collection of the child star’s movies in color for the first time. “Heidi” (1937), the first of three titles in the collection, will be available this spring, followed later by “Dimples” (1936) and “Bright Eyes” (1934). “The Shirley Temple Collection” is being marketed under the new Fox Family Features banner.

* Telethon Tabulation: The 23rd annual Easter Seal Telethon last weekend garnered more than $52 million in pledges nationwide, organizers reported Monday. The 18-hour fund-raiser, broadcast locally on KTLA-TV Channel 5, took in $1.51 million in the Los Angeles-Orange County-Ventura County area. The money goes to help people with disabilities.

* Presidential Mom: Emmy-winning actress Rue McClanahan has been hired by Simon & Schuster Audio to record Virginia Kelly’s autobiography, “Leading With My Heart,” which will be released in June simultaneously with the book. McClanahan was recommended to Simon & Schuster by Kelly’s son, President Clinton, who said that the former co-star of “The Golden Girls” had been his mother’s favorite actress.

* Gray Returns: Fox confirmed Monday that Linda Gray, who starred for 11 years as Sue Ellen Ewing on “Dallas,” has been signed to head the cast of “Models Inc.,” a drama series that will be spun off from “Melrose Place” this summer. Gray will turn up in four episodes of “Melrose Place” beginning April 27, playing the mother of Amanda Woodward (Heather Locklear). Gray’s character owns a modeling agency in Los Angeles that will be the focus of the new series.

MOVIES

Schindler’s Fallout: Emily Schindler is fed up with Steven Spielberg’s epic movie about her husband Oskar and said she won’t be watching tonight’s gala opening in Argentina, where she now lives. “I’ve sat through that film twice already. I don’t want to see it again,” she said Monday, complaining that the three-hour movie was too long for someone of her 86 years. Instead, she plans to sit in the foyer while Argentine ministers, foreign diplomats and other dignitaries watch the film, in which she is a minor character. The movie, nominated for 12 Oscars, shows how her husband, a German industrialist, fooled the Nazis and saved his 1,200 Jewish workers from death camps. Emily Schindler has endorsed the movie, but she shuns the hordes of journalists who have tramped through her tiny house outside Buenos Aires, where she has lived with the help of the Jewish organization B’nai B’rith since after World War II. “For 40 years nobody came. Now I can’t get away from it,” she said.

* ‘The Crow’ Flies: “The Crow,” the film that martial-arts star Brandon Lee was working on at the time of his death, has been picked up for distribution in the United States by Miramax/Dimension Films. The company plans to release the action movie on May 13 on 1,500 screens. Directed by Alex Proyas and described as a “Gothic urban fantasy for the ‘90s,” “The Crow” is based on the comic-book series and comic strip by James O’Barr, and features Lee as a dead musician who returns to Earth to avenge his murder. Lee, the son of Bruce Lee, was accidentally shot to death during the filming of the movie last year. . . . Meanwhile, “Wagons East” resumed production in Mexico on Saturday, a day after star John Candy died of a heart attack. The producers said that most of his scenes already had been filmed.

ART

Interactive Art: Beginning next spring, 17 visitors at a time to the National Gallery of Art will be able to browse through its 2,500 works without moving from computer terminals. The gallery, free to visitors, houses one of the greatest U.S. collections of art from all over the world. It said this will be the first complete multimedia system in an American museum. Terminals will be housed in a special information room near the entrance to the Washington gallery on the Mall, between the Capitol and the Washington Monument.

QUICK TAKES

Whitney Houston and her husband, Bobby Brown, will perform together for the first time on national television on the “Soul Train Music Awards,” airing next Tuesday on KTLA-TV Channel 5. . . . Screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (“The Remains of the Day,” “Howards End,” “A Room With a View”) will receive the 1994 Screen Laurel Award, the highest honor from the Writers Guild of America, during the guild’s annual ceremony Sunday night. . . . Scott Weinger, who plays Steve on the ABC sitcom “Full House,” will join ABC’s “Good Morning America” as a regular contributor of stories about youth, beginning March 7.