Retailers Always Love Whitney. Right?

Whitney Houston will be on the mind of record retailers and executives on Wednesday. That’s when the weekly SoundScan figures will indicate whether the singer’s new Arista Records album, “The Preacher’s Wife” soundtrack, can repeat the fast start of her remarkable 1992 soundtrack collection, “The Bodyguard.” “The Bodyguard” sold about 145,000 copies in its first week in the stores, enough to enter the charts at No. 2 in November of that year. It went on five weeks later to set a SoundScan-era record for most units sold in a seven-day period--nearly 1.1 million copies. Contributing to that sales bonanza: the success of the film, the holiday sales rush and the immense popularity of a single from the record, Houston’s show-stopping version of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.” With Recording Industry Assn. of America-registered sales of 15 million copies, “The Bodyguard” is the biggest-selling album of the ‘90s and is tied for fifth on the all-time list. It might be overly optimistic to believe that “The Preacher’s Wife,” which was released last Tuesday, will be able to match that figure, but the first single from the album, “I Believe in You and Me,” was added to the playlists of more than 300 radio stations last week, the highest first-week tally of any single in Arista history. The feel-good movie from Disney’s Touchstone, starring Houston and Denzel Washington, doesn’t open until Dec. 13.

Super Bowl XXXI, Movie Trailers VII

It’s only the first week of December, but Hollywood is already caught up in Super Bowl frenzy. Last January, 20th Century Fox hit pay dirt, running a commercial for its sci-fi film “Independence Day” during the Super Bowl telecast. The film went on to open huge and grossed more than $300 million at the domestic box office. Now, commercials for at least five and perhaps as many as seven movies are in the works for Super Bowl XXXI, airing Jan. 26 from New Orleans on the Fox network. A 30-second spot reportedly runs between $1.2 million and $1.3 million. Some studios are still deciding which of their films to hype during the telecast, while others have already decided. Paramount Pictures, for example, plans to air spots for the Howard Stern comedy “Private Parts” and the Val Kilmer action film “The Saint.” Fox, meanwhile, is said to be choosing two films among either “Volcano,” “Speed 2,” “Alien Resurrection” or the “Star Wars” trilogy. MGM and Rysher Entertainment will advertise their airplane thriller “Turbulence,” which stars Ray Liotta and Lauren Holly. Producer David Kirkpatrick, a consultant to Rysher, said that the filmmakers asked Fox football announcer John Madden--whose fear of flying is legendary--to plug the movie during the game. “John is notorious for only traveling [from game to game] on four wheels,” Kirkpatrick said. The commercial shows a jetliner crashing through a stadium scoreboard and Madden would have said, “That’s why I take the bus.” But Madden’s agent, Sandy Montag, said he would not be doing movie spots during the Super Bowl: “John has enough exposure on that day.”

In the St. Nick of Time

A year earlier than expected, a High Renaissance masterpiece by Fra Bartolommeo--purchased last May by the J. Paul Getty Museum for a whopping $22.5 million--is going on view Tuesday at the museum in Malibu. The Getty had planned to unveil “The Rest on the Flight Into Egypt With Saint John the Baptist” (formerly known as “The Holy Family With the Infant St. John”) in late 1997, at the opening of the Getty Center in Brentwood, but the spectacular new acquisition arrived a bit sooner than planned and is in such good condition that there was no point in waiting to show it to the public, said Deborah Gribbon, the museum’s associate director and chief curator. Perfect for the Christmas season, the painting is an icon of High Renaissance art that demonstrates the Florentine artist’s ability to paint breathtakingly beautiful figures that appear both human and divine. “This is the kind of painting I never thought we would be able to have in our collection,” Gribbon said. It wasn’t easy. The Getty offered to buy the painting last year from a private collection, but had to wait six months for an export license, to give the British a chance to match the offer. No buyer emerged but, as a condition of sale, the painting was displayed for an additional six months at London’s National Gallery--next to a similar painting by the artist.

Just When It Was Safe to Turn on the TV

Network executives have spent most of the fall lamenting that their prime-time schedules have been disrupted by baseball playoffs, presidential debates and even Ross Perot infomercials. So just when viewers have started to get acclimated to the regular lineups, the holidays arrive, and the networks trot out a wide assortment of specials interrupting regular programming all over again. A show like “Relativity,” for example, which ABC still hopes will become a habit with viewers, will only air twice this month. Network officials say that the situation is largely unavoidable, based on prime-time economics: Networks only order 25 episodes or less even on hit series, which means there have to be a certain number of repeats or preemptions during the season. Still, the desire for greater continuity and low ratings for repeats has spurred talk of trying to increase orders on top shows, as Fox does by offering more than 30 episodes of “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Melrose Place” each season. In the interim, viewers can decide whether they’d rather spend their holidays watching Heather Locklear vamp it up as Amanda, or Angela Lansbury as “Mrs. Santa Claus.”

--Compiled by Times Staff Writers