Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation’s press.

PEOPLE

Just ‘Peanuts’?: Barbra Streisand got some help at the $5-blackjack table over the 4th of July weekend from a floor manager at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Ledyard, Conn., officials said Thursday. The manager, who wasn’t identified, has been suspended and fined for helping her win. Nobody at the casino, run by the Mashantucket Pequot tribe, would reveal specifically what the manager did or how much money Streisand won. “We’re talking peanuts here,” casino spokesman Bruce MacDonald said. Meanwhile Martin Erlichman, Streisand’s manager, said he hasn’t spoken to the singer, who is out of the country on vacation. “She didn’t ask anybody to do anything,” he said. The floor manager immediately reported himself to the tribal gaming commission, the casino said.

*

‘Voodoo Spell’: “We’re the closest of friends,” says Julia Roberts about estranged husband Lyle Lovett on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” taped for airing Monday. “There’s a very intense bond there that’s unshakable.” As for their short-lived marriage, she says: “We tried to make more out of it, we tried to parlay it into something that it wasn’t.” The 27-year-old actress added that it’s not true that other alleged Lovett love interests interfered. She notes that since childhood she thought marriage was “what you’re supposed to do” and calls Lovett “the nicest man you’ve ever met. . . . I got pretty swept away. He put some voodoo spell on me.”

*

Welll, Golllly : Jim Nabors wants to celebrate. Best known in the role of affable Gomer Pyle, Nabors says he’s fully recovered from a life-saving liver transplant he received in February 1994. His own liver was damaged by the hepatitis B virus he apparently contracted while traveling in India. “I was right down to the wire,” Nabors said in Kalispell, Mont. “I had about a week left to live. I’ve always had a very strong religious faith, so I was never really frightened. I was apprehensive but not frightened.”

*

Exercising Right: Call Melanie Griffith the working-out girl. She says she’s on a new kick to keep fit after successfully battling alcohol and drug addictions. “Once you have an addictive personality, you’re never really able to get rid of it,” Griffith tells Family Circle magazine in an interview for the Aug. 8 issue. “But I’ve learned to focus on other areas, like my kids, eating well and exercising right,” says the actress, seen recently in “Nobody’s Fool” and “Buffalo Girls.” At 37, she says her exercise program may even work a little too well. At 5-foot-9 and 120 pounds, she said she is too thin.

MUSIC

Royal Flush: Britain’s Royal Opera House has landed the biggest handout ever made by the National Lottery, triggering a row over funding for art and anger from charities. The 140-year-old theater in London’s Covent Garden, premier opera house in Britain and the home of the Royal Ballet, was given an $87.70-million grant for new building and refurbishment. Lord Gowrie, the arts council chairman, said the Opera House deserved the lion’s share of the $98.8 million handed out from lottery profits. He denied he was backing entertainment “for rich toffs [swells]. I do not like the crudity of the words rich and poor,” he explained. “Opera audiences I have seen are very often quite struggling middle-class professional people.” He said the Opera House, where top-priced seats cost $426, faced closure unless urgent repairs are carried out. But charities said they were much more deserving causes for the public’s money, with Cancer Research Campaign spokeswoman Susan Osborne sounding a sour note: “We think this is an obscene amount of money to give to one organization. This leaves causes like us out in the cold.”

TELEVISION

They’re No. 1: KCAL Channel 9 has been designated the No. 1 news station in the nation for 1995 by the Radio Television News Directors Assn. KCAL received two prestigious Edward R. Murrow Awards in the Television Large Staff Division including “best newscast” and “best spot news.”

*

A Future Fund: With congressional downsizing of its funding on the march, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has approved an $11-million “Future Fund” to provide assistance to public radio and television stations to increase efficiency and reduce dependence on federal tax dollars. The fund--itself derived from federal money--is designed to provide incentives to stations to raise non-federal money and streamline operations within stations and areas served by more than one station. In its first year, beginning in October, $7.25 million will come from CPB’s $29 million discretionary budget and the remainder from the $176 million community service grant pool which goes to stations.

LEGAL FILE

Love Faces Charge: Courtney Love, lead singer of the rock band Hole, was ordered Wednesday to appear in court in Ephrata, Wash., to face allegations that she punched a member of another band in the face at the inaugural Lollapalooza 95 concert. Kathleen Hanna of the Olympia-based band Bikini Kill told investigators that Love punched her in the face when she was onstage July 4. Love was given a criminal citation--similar to a traffic ticket--for investigation of fourth-degree assault. She was not arrested and won’t be if she shows up at the Aug. 14 arraignment. Love is the widow of former Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain, who committed suicide in April, 1994.