TELEVISIONSaturday Night ‘Mad’: Fox will do battle...

TELEVISION

Saturday Night ‘Mad’: Fox will do battle with the beleaguered “Saturday Night Live” this fall with “Mad TV,” a new one-hour sketch comedy series. The show will include film and television parodies, political satire, spoofs and commentary. The ensemble cast will feature mostly unknown comics and actors.

*

Sea Hunt: There’s a new captain on board “seaQuest DSV.” Michael Ironside will assume command next season on NBC’s drama about a deep-submergence submarine. Ironside will take over for Roy Scheider, who will continue on the series in a recurring role. Ironside has played the villain in several movies such as “Total Recall,” “Highlander II” and “Free Willy,” and was featured last season on NBC’s “ER” as the emotionally detached chairman of the emergency room. He will play a tough but thoughtful Navy career man who guides the submarine during its third season.

*

Tracy TV: Tracy Ullman will star next year in a new half-hour comedy series for HBO. The 10 episodes of “Tracy Takes On . . .” will spotlight Ullman in multiple roles, including many of the characters from her two 1993 HBO specials. Julie Kavner and Michael Tucker are among the planned guest stars.

*

First Lady Debbie: Debbie Allen will receive the Lena Horne award for outstanding career achievement at the First Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards Aug. 6 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Allen is being awarded for her work as an actress, director, choreographer and producer. Rap group Salt ‘N’ Pepa will also receive the entertainer of the year award at the ceremony, which will air live on KTLA Channel 5.

MOVIES

A Kiss for ‘Princess’: After a release that industry insiders saw as ill-timed, the acclaimed family film “A Little Princess” will be re-released by Warner Bros. Aug. 4 with a brand-new advertising campaign. The modestly budgeted “Princess” was released in mid-May to glowing notices but got lost amid big-budget movies like “Die Hard With a Vengeance” and “Casper.” Currently on 365 screens, the film has earned just under $8 million, which barely covers marketing costs. Warners admitted to the Hollywood Reporter that the film may have been incorrectly marketed, targeted too narrowly to young females.

*

‘Harriet’ the Movie: The popular children’s book “Harriet the Spy” will be the first feature film venture for Nickelodeon in conjunction with Paramount Pictures. There is no director or star yet attached to the film, which will begin production in mid-September.

*

Garbo Returns: Turner Movie Classics will present 10 minutes of previously lost footage from the 1928 silent film “The Divine Woman” June 30 at 7:45 p.m. The footage is all that remains of the film, which was recently uncovered after 50 years in Russia by a Swedish researcher. Garbo was 23 when she made the film. It will air during a special night of Garbo classics.

THEATER

Showtime?: Next up among new projects for Garth Drabinsky and LIVENT, producers of “Kiss of the Spider Woman” and “Show Boat,” is the stage musical version of “Ragtime,” but don’t rush out for tickets yet. Drabinsky’s Toronto office says the show’s still being written and the first viewing is months away. Terrence McNally, who wrote the book for “Spider Woman,” has the same duties for “Ragtime.” The score is by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, who brought us “Once on This Island.”

ART

Artful Grant: A $225,000 grant for “Exiles and Emigres, 1933-45,” a major traveling exhibition scheduled to open in 1997 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is among 243 grants totaling $37.3 million recently awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts. The show--organized by Stephanie Barron, LACMA’s curator of 20th-Century art and coordinator of curatorial affairs--will analyze the impact of the period 1933-1945 on art and culture, focusing on the work of 22 emigre artists, photographers and architects.

HONORS

Lehman Feted: Ernest Lehman, who scripted such classic films as “The Sound of Music,” “West Side Story,” “North by Northwest” and “Hello, Dolly!,” will be honored Sunday at the Writers Guild for its “Tribute to the Writer Series.” Joining in the tribute will be such stars as Eva Marie Saint, Tony Curtis and Martin Landau. “North by Northwest” will be screened during the ceremony.

QUICK TAKE

“Rob Roy” star Liam Neeson and his actress wife, Natasha Richardson, have their first child. The boy, named Michael Richard Antonio Neeson, was born at 12:05 p.m. Dublin time on Thursday at a hospital in the Irish city. . . . AMC Theaters throughout Los Angeles will feature a summer-long matinee series of family films that will screen 10:30 a.m. Mondays through Fridays beginning next week. Among the films are “Little Big League,” “The Secret Garden,” “Far From Home” and “Richie Rich.” . . . The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation has named national activist and former newspaper editor William Waybourn as its new managing director.